Home listening - Scriabin, Chopin and Liszt piano works

The Guardian 0

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• The Chinese pianist Chen Yunjie, now reaching mid-career having had a prodigious start, is among the few players in the world to have performed the 10 sonatas of Scriabin in one concert. That may sound like a Guinness world record kind of feat, but Chen’s live recording of Scriabin’s Sonatas Nos 6, 1, 8 and 5 (Accentus) suggests dedication indeed to this singular, sensuous body of music: romantic in the earlier examples, then spinning off into aural and structural fantasy. Chen calls the Sonata No 8, Op 66 his favourite (it was the last Scriabin composed). Its single-movement structure, melancholic and phantasmagorical, captures the pianist’s imagination and draws the best of his playing.

Related: The week in classical: Proms 32, 34 & 35; Rinaldo review – happy returns all round