Hyperion Records

Op 37 opens with troubled soliloquy, but No 2 with its massive chordal writing is Scriabin at his most self-assured. Here, in the sixth bar, as Gottfried Eberle has pointed out, the ‘Mystic Chord’ is heard for the first time – that sonority which is unveiled fully in the Fifth Sonata – although it appears here conventionally spaced in thirds. No 3, a peaceful interlude, gives a respite before the wrathful gestures of No 4. The leaping octaves and tumultuous arpeggios here point directly to the late style.

from notes by Simon Nicholls © 2001