Sonates Pour Piano (Intégrale) [CD de audio] Dmitri Alexeev and Alexandre Scriabin

New recordings of Scriabin's complete piano sonatas are rare, and rightly so - only the best have the vision, skills and courage to explore the cosmic and metaphysical world of these 20th century masterpieces. Dmitri Alexeev is an artist of such caliber: equipped with a formidable technique, he immerses himself in the hyper-individualistic style of the Russian eccentric, delving deep to get to the bottom of pieces like the Black Mass Sonata or its spiritual opposite, the White Mass Sonata. A fascinating journey, from the romantic sonatas, inspired by Chopin, of the first four, to the last sonatas, written in the unique Scriabinesque atonal language, inspired by his theosophical ideas and megalomaniacal metaphysics. Dmitri Alexeev is one of today's leading pianists, having played with the world's leading orchestras and conductors. His substantial discography on EMI Classics was awarded numerous international awards. New recording, extensive content notes written by a Russian Scriabin scholar. Alexander Scriabin, disengaged musical poet, theosophist who saw his calling as nothing less than forging a unity between man and God through music, can best be appreciated, perhaps, not through the lush orchestral music, but his still most innovative piano music. The ten sonatas span his career, from the Silver Age departures of the first four-movement sonata to the increasingly elliptical and sudden shifts in mood and material through the unique forms of the last four cycles, including the seventh (White Mass) and the ninth (Black Mass). It takes fiendishly talented pianism to keep up with Scriabin's swarms of notes that fly across the page like Siberian blizzards, and then see through them to shape-shifting melodies wrapped in mystical harmonies. So step forward Dmitri Alexeev, who first attracted attention 30 years ago with fast and furious recordings of concertos by Shostakovich and Prokofiev: recordings of sensational ease that have stood the test of time. Alexeev's rigorous Russian education began at the Moscow Conservatory with Dmitri Bashkirov, and he has maintained an especially intimate relationship with the music of his homeland, while, curiously, he had never before recorded one of the great cycles of Russian piano music. This, then, is a first, sure to be noticed and sought after by pianists around the world.