As well as the sequence of 20 short works that are specifically labelled “poems”, beginning with the two pieces Op 32 (from 1903) Garrick Ohlsson’s collection also includes other piano miniatures from the last 12 years of Scriabin’s life; these pieces inhabit similar concentrated worlds of lyrical effusion and extreme emotional suggestion. Scriabin’s last three orchestral scores were designated as poems too, and in all the late works, with their desperate urge to express the inexpressible, such a musically imprecise title seems perfectly suited. Distinctions between some of these pieces and the late piano sonatas are hard to sustain – the last poem, Vers La Flamme Op 72, one of Scriabin’s most extraordinary achievements, belongs to exactly the same obsessive world as the 10th Sonata. Ohlsson understands such obsessiveness as well as any pianist alive today, and what his performances occasionally lack in colour and variety they make up in effortless virtuosity and total musical command.