This 1996 recording appears to be the first of this ballet score, prepared in 1975 by Alexander Nemtin (1936-1999), from fourteen short piano pieces of
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915).
It was conductor-pianist
Vladimir Ashkenazy, who in making this recording, brought the score back from near-oblivion. Ashkenazy has performed and recorded
Scriabin's music extensively as a pianist and a conductor. His recordings include all the piano sonatas, a quantity of the other piano music, the piano concerto (as conductor), and the symphonies.
In this recording, Ashkenazy strongly supports Nemtin in re-creating
Scriabin's personal and highly distinctive style of orchestration, as it was expressed at about the time of the Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54 (the opus numbers of most of the piano pieces Nemtin selected are in the fifties and sixties). Ashkenazy very effectively finds the dance-like pulse of all the pieces, realizing what was an aim of this project, to bring the ballet score to the attention of leading conductors and choreographers.
Ashkenazy conducts the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in this performance, which also includes a prominent orchestral piano part, played by
Alexander Ghindin. These musicians succeed admirably in re-creating
Scriabin's delicate nuances of orchestral sound, along with his characteristic sense of life energy.
Andrew Cornall, the producer, wisely set the recording in the famous, warm ambience of the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin-Dahlem, where the
Berlin Philharmonic made many of its best recordings, before the construction of the Philharmonie hall. The sound of that venue, captured by recording engineer
Neil Hutchinson, puts the final polish on one of the most desirable and unusual recordings of
Scriabin's music.