Alexander Scriabin - Symphony No. 1 & The Poem of Ecstasy

In Pletnev’s hands the opening bars of the first Lento waft into one’s consciousness as if borne on a gentle, perfumed zephyr.
...Goodness, what stupendous playing and exemplary sonics.

No one, and I mean no one, delivers the second Lento more beautifully than Pletnev and the RNO. Together they create an air of delicious intoxication that seduced me from the start; indeed, it’s as if they’ve unlatched and unleashed all one’s dormant senses. From the music’s languid caresses to its precipitous teasings, this is the most erotically charged performance of the piece I can recall.

Heavens, what an experience. In fact I’m certain you won’t hear a more powerful or persuasive account of this piece any time soon.

Incandescent Scriabin, superbly recorded...

It is very much to be hoped that this superb recording is a fore-runner of a complete SACD cycle of the Scriabin Symphonies for PENTATONE.

...it is a testament to Pletnev’s understanding of and thorough immersion in the manner of Skriabin’s musical thinking that this performance is both fluid and taut, the music’s colours gleaming and shimmering...an outstanding tribute to Skriabin in his centenary year.

I've never heard this movement, or the whole symphony for that matter, done so well and expressed with so much conviction.

...Pletnev's pace and grasp of the sonic landscape are bang on the money, and the members of the orchestra give it all they've got, and project a moment of expressive elation like no other.

If you don't know the music of Alexander Scriabin, this new recording is a great place to take the plunge into his deep harmonic waters.

August, 2015

[Pletnev] has an innate feel for the symphony's and The Poem of Ecstasy's shape and colour, by no means afraid to let rip when full instrumental forces are in play but also well aware that Scriabin could use his palette of timbres with telling discretion... These are performances in which you sense that the Russian National Orchestra and all the artists involved have this music coursing through their very veins.