As Scriabin’s Preludes progressively leave their Chopin models behind and dig deeper into sensuous abstraction, Evgeny Zarafiants’ probing, dark toned interpretations truly hit home. No skating over Scriabin’s increasingly troubled waters for this pianist, whose wide dynamic range and multi-tiered palette of articulations add dramatic dimension and heft to these elusive scores. The real eye-openers, though, are four preludes written by Scriabin’s eleven-year-old son Julian. They’re quite extraordinary in their confident, fluent piano writing and harmonic sophistication, bearing hints of early Schoenberg alongside the elder Scriabin’s musical style. Julian drowned at age 11 in 1919. We will never know if he would have grown up to take over the family business, so to speak, yet these remarkable pieces are no doubt worthy of the Scriabin name.
