Reviews

Scriabin Piano Music
by Chang Tou Liang, pianomania: CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2010)

Towards The Flame is the unofficial title of this anthology of piano music by the Russian mystic composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), chronologically tracing his evolution from ardent Romantic to raving modernist. The contrasts could not have been more stark, beginning with two early waltzes (Op.1 and Op. posthumous) which betray Chopin’s influence and salon pretensions. Becoming more adventurous with harmonies and dynamics, his Polonaise (Op.21) and Fantasy (Op.28) break free from social niceties.

Some of the shorter pieces are titled Poems, some with fanciful descriptions. Tragic Poem (Op.34) is restless while Satanic Poem (Op.36) is a ironic portrait of masked hypocrisy. The works get weirder and more enigmatic by the track, culminating in the eponymous Vers La Flamme (Towards The Flame), an obsessive single-themed number that splutters, sizzles and sears like a Roman candle. One writer described this as Scriabin’s vision of the nuclear bomb. The elegant American-trained Chinese pianist Xiayin Wang has the full measure of Scriabin’s neuroses and febrile flailings, with the vividly recorded sound and her personal programme notes as definite plusses.

Scriabin Piano Music
by Lee Passarella, Audiophile Audition (April 28, 2010)

Young Chinese pianist Xiayin Wang takes on quite a challenge here, essaying short works by Scriabin from his earliest days in the thrall of Chopin to compositions of his last years, in which he created that uniquely otherworldly soundscape he’s famous for. To cover so much stylistic ground in a single recording would seem to challenge a pianist of any experience, but Ms. Wang, who made both her recording and her Carnegie Hall debut in 2007, is undaunted and succeeds in giving us a fascinating portrait of a composer’s remarkable growth.

It’s often noted that in his Opus 1 Schumann created an instantly recognizable pianistic idiom that would evolve but not substantially change. With Scriabin, nothing could be farther from the truth. Like Balakirev before him, Scriabin turned to Chopin for his model instead of more stylistically advanced ones such as Liszt or Alkan. Scriabin’s Opus 1 waltzes, written when the composer was only fourteen, could easily be mistaken for the genuine article, Chopin opus waaaay-posthumous. As with Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, Chopin’s pearly runs and fulsome Romantic chords are beefed up and chromaticised substantially in Scriabin’s Polonaise in B-flat minor, Op. 21, written in his twenty-fifth year, but the spirit of the long-dead master is still very much in evidence.

With the Fantaisie in B minor, Opus 28, we have, well, more languidly fantastic music as befits the title, but Chopin’s influence has been superseded by Liszt’s. Move on a few opus numbers to Deux Poèmes, Op. 32, Poème tragique, Op. 34, and Poème satanique, Op. 36, and we have the first instances of a uniquely Scriabinesque vehicle, the poème, in which the composer was able both to unleash his fantasy and, later, explore his peculiar brand of mysticism. The Tragic Poem is more dramatic than tragic, reflecting the classical definition of tragic, while the Satanic Poem is sly and sardonic in the fashion of Liszt’s Mephisto in the Mephisto Walzes.
So even in the creation of his titles, Scriabin seems poised to confound and mystify, which he does increasingly, as in the Trois Morceaux, Op. 52, with its aptly named central panel Enigme, or the equally enigmatic, brief Feuillet d’album, Op. 58. Here, as Ms. Wang explains in her intriguing and well-written notes to the recording, “This extraordinary small piece could be a postscript to his last big score, Prometheus; the harmony is now marooned in almost stationary pools and circlings, and there are no standard chords.”

On, then, to the ecstatic Vers la flamme, Op. 72, the composer’s own Magic Fire Music, and the eminently undanceable Deux Dances, Op. 73, the second of which, Flammes sombres, alternates between near-static languor and manic, pulsing energy fueled by brutal off-rhythms. The references to flames, as in Scriabin’s orchestral Prometheus, might be a window on his mystical worldview, if anyone could fully grasp it. The Promethean reference probably has to do with Scriabin’s vision of the artist, and specifically himself, as modern-day Prometheus bringing heavenly fire to other mortals. Something like that. As it is, better to let the strangely compelling music speak for itself and leave the metaphysics to Scriabin’s biographers.
In a well-known statement, Aaron Copland both praised and took Scriabin to task for the “extraordinary mistake” whereby, in his sonatas, he strapped a “really new body of feeling into the strait-jacket of the old classical sonata-form, recapitulation and all.” While I don’t entirely subscribe to Copland’s criticism, perhaps it can be said that a truer picture of Scriabin’s genius can be found in these short piano works, at least until he reached his breakthrough in the last two or three sonatas.

I’m happy to have Ms. Wang as tour guide on this journey through Scriabin’s remarkable musical progress. She plays with color, warmth, and drama throughout, and though pianists such as Horowitz and Richter are famously associated with this music, I think you won’t go wrong in trusting a young pianist in command of such large technique and musical intelligence. She’s recorded in nicely resonant, up-to-date sound to boot.

Scriabin Piano Music
by Jerry Dubins , FanFare Magazine (Nov/Dec 2009)

My encounters with the music of Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915) have continued to be somewhat sporadic. Needless to say, I’m familiar with his widely recorded, expansive orchestral scores—the “Divine Poem” and “Poem of Ecstasy” Symphonies, as well as his symphonic tone poem Prometheus, “Poem of Fire”—but his very substantial body of works for solo piano, really the bulk of his output, is pretty much terra incognita to me, despite the fact that I did review a disc of the composer’s mazurkas played by Eric Le Van as far back as 27:5 and, more recently, a CD that contained his F♯-Minor Piano Concerto in 32:1.

Having listened to this new release from pianist Xiayin Wang, I simply cannot imagine how or why I have managed to avoid Scriabin’s solo piano œuvre for so long. The music here, and Wang’s playing of it are of an exquisite beauty beyond description. There is no need to recap Wang’s biography or credentials; Peter J. Rabinowitz interviewed her for a feature article and review in 31:3. The three Scriabin pieces on the Marquis CD reviewed by Rabinowitz—the Deux Poèmes, op. 32, the Waltz, op. 38, and Vers la flamme, op. 72—are duplicated on the present Naxos album.

Wang presents her program in opus number order, which happens to correspond to the chronology as well. As one listens to Scriabin’s progress from his early Waltz, op. 1, written in 1886 to his Two Dances, op. 73, written in 1914, the year before his death at the age of 43, one is reminded to an extent of Heinrich Heine’s skewering of French Romantic poet and playwright Alfred de Musset, calling him “a young man with a great future behind him.” Scriabin’s earliest pieces—waltzes, nocturnes, preludes, polonaises, etudes, and mazurkas—mirror Chopin with uncanny similitude. By 1903, considered a dividing point in the composer’s life and the beginning of his middle period, we get works like the Poème tragique, op. 34, and the Poème satanique, op. 36. Scriabin’s writing is now on a grander scale, taking on a more symphonic weight, with the heavy chording and kinds of keyboard figurations more typical of Liszt and even Alkan.

By the time we get to the end—the Two Dances, op. 73—Scriabin, physically ill and most likely mentally unstable, is now totally consumed by mysticism, theosophy, and his theories of synesthesia (color hearing) in which specific keys and tonal centers are related to specific colors and corresponding emotional states. His never realized final opus magnum, Mysterium, was to be “a multimedia work to be performed in the Himalayas that would bring about Armageddon, a grandiose religious synthesis of all arts which would herald the birth of a new world.”

Scriabin’s late piano pieces written around this time sound almost impressionistic, but not in a way that would be mistaken for Debussy. They are economical in material, built from minimal, somewhat static motifs, but quite extravagant in technical and expressive range. Vers la flamme is a good example. It’s almost minimalist in its dependence on a single motivic gesture; but through cumulative piling on of keyboard sonorities rather than variation techniques, Scriabin maximizes its potential.

Pianist Xiayin Wang seems to have a very special affinity for Scriabin’s music. But then she is not alone in being a proponent of these works. Both Ashkenazy for Decca and even earlier, Michael Ponti for Vox, essayed much of this repertoire. Ruth Laredo also made a significant contribution on Nonesuch, and Richter was by no means a stranger to Scriabin either. Still, there is something I find very appealing in Wang’s playing. Her tone has a silvery quality to it, a lighter touch perhaps, that allows her to negotiate the more thunderous and tumultuous passages without sounding overly thick and heavy; and her approach in the quieter more lyrical pieces strikes me as quite poetic.

A beautiful recital by an up-and-coming young artist, captured in excellent sound by Naxos’s recording team. Highly recommended.

Scriabin Piano Music
by Bryce Morrison , Gramaphone Awards 2009 (October 2009)

Xiayin Wang, Chinese-born but American-based, offers a Scriabin recital with a difference. Avoiding large-scale works (the sonatas), she takes us on a carefully planned journey offering a bird’s eye view of the composer’s restless, meteoric career. An exception is provided by the Fantasy where Wang’s scintillating technique makes light of every virtuoso challenge and where her commitment makes you wonder why such starry, ultra-romantic poetry is not in the repertoire of many more pianists. Here, as Wang puts it in her excellent notes, Scriabin “abandons Chopinesque poise for abandonment”. Already a far cry from her curtain-raiser, two waltzes composed when Scriabin was 14 are clearly besotted with Chopin. The single Polonaise, too, while teetering on the edge of experimental horizons, is a fierce memory of Chopin and it is only when you arrive at the later works that you meet the composer’s more obsessive, opalescent and fragmented style. One the other hand, the Op 38 Waltz unites all aspects of Scriabin’s multifaceted genius, a magical and dazzling memory of Liszt’s Valses oublie’es.

Wang plays all this music with a special brilliance and refinement, and if you occasionally doubt her musical range in the darker regions of Scriabin’s personality, she comes up with a performance of Ver la flamme that moves superbly from a brooding menace to a final apocalyptic blaze. Finely recorded, Wang’s recital provides an unusually perceptive introduction to Scriabin’s piano music, and I now look forward to hearing her in a wide range of repertoire.

Scriabin Piano Music
by Göran Forsling , MusicWeb-International.com (September 2009)

Naxos recorded a quite comprehensive Scriabin piano cycle about a decade ago, including good readings of the sonatas by Bernd Glemser and masterly interpretations of the preludes by Evgeny Zarafiants. The disc now under review might be seen as a mopping up of sundry pieces not included in that cycle. Since the programme is strictly chronological and spans practically his whole creative life, from the two valses, written when he was fourteen, to the Deux danses, Op. 73 which were composed during his last year and were followed only by the Five Preludes, Op. 74. This allows us to follow his development, through various phases, landing at quite some distance from where it all started when Chopin was his idol and model.

‘Chopin without the melodies’ someone wrote condescendingly about the early Scriabin. I think that is an unfair description. The valses are attractive and have an elegance of their own and the Polonaise, which he wrote when he was already 25, still has more than a flavour of Chopin, which should come as no surprise.

But then there was a watershed, which coincided with the turn of the century watershed in 1900. The Fantaisie, Op. 28 takes us to a different sound-world with harmonies that tell us that the Wagner bacillus had reached him. In the Poèmes Opp, 32, 34 and 36 from three years later he had gone one step further and created his own impressionism. The Poème tragique is honestly more stormy than tragic and the Satan that he portrays in Poème satanique is hardly the prevalent picture of him but rather a ‘Devil in disguise’.

With the Poèmes Opp. 41 and 52, though separated by some years, we find the ethereal Scriabin, floating about in an impressionist landscape filled with haze, mist and blurred contours. Finally we are at the end of the journey with Vers la flamme with its almost manic repetitive eruptions and the Deux danses with the same kind of intensity.

The young Xiayin Wang, who studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music, is a dynamic interpreter, powerful but also able to relax without losing momentum, as for instance in the lyrical moments of the delicate Valse in A flat major, Op. 38. She has a wide palette of colours and the superb recording brings out the full scope of her playing admirably.

As sheer pianism this is a disc that requires to be heard by every lover of piano music. Scriabin lovers will find plenty to revel in and for the reader who is a newcomer to the music of this very special composer I can hardly imagine a better disc to gain insight into his world. From there one can then explore further his preludes, sonatas and other genres.

Scriabin Piano Music
by Listening Post, The Buffalo News - Entertainment (June 7, 2009)

Scriabin, Piano Music: Poems, Waltzes and Dances performed by Xiayin Wang (Naxos). It has never exactly escaped notice that so many of the best Scriabin pianists have been female (Ruth Laredo and Hilde Somer, for instance). It isn’t that fire-breathing male piano virtuosos of the Horowitz and Richter stripe didn’t play Scriabin often and brilliantly, it’s just that Scriabin’s conspicuously small hands (especially compared to those of his composer/ pianist contemporary Rachmaninoff) and his music’s occasionally riotous sensuality so often find congenial interpreters among those who aren’t locked into more rigid “male” piano paradigms. Here is a beautiful young pianist with a superb Scriabin recital that is a bit eccentric even within Scriabin’s visionary oeuvre. She completely eschews the sonatas that are probably the keys to Scriabin’s entire musical achievement and performs, in chronological order, selections from his entire composing life at the piano, from the composer of Chopinesque waltzes to the ecstatic and sometimes incendiary farewells to tonality in late Scriabin. Her performances are warm and intuitive and logical and completely non-rhetorical. The result is an extraordinary disclong journey into Scriabin’s increasingly sulfurous and mad world. ★★★ 1/2 ( J. S.)

Scriabin Piano Music
by Jed Distler, Classics Today.com (June 2009)

The booklet notes that Xiayin Wang provides for her Naxos Scriabin recital are as intelligent and insightful as her interpretations. The pianist's urbane, witty treatment of such Chopin-influenced fare as the D-flat and F minor Waltzes and the B-flat minor Polonaise convincingly transforms the younger composer into the ironist he never was and never would be. It makes me wonder how she'd enliven Scriabin's Mazurkas. Her taut, harmonically aware renditions of the Op. 32, Op. 34, Op. 36, and Op. 52 Poèmes fall agreeably on the ear, notwithstanding more drawn out, subjective, and sexy accounts to be savored (Pascal Amoyel on Calliope, for example). Appropriately fiery climaxes rivet attention in Flammes sombres and Vers la flamme, although much of the diffuse B minor Fantasie grows too loud too soon when compared to Alexander Melnikov's more diverse pacing and wider dynamic range. Overall, a fine disc that bodes well for future releases from this talented pianist.

Scriabin Piano Music
by Uncle Dave Lewis, Allmusic (June 2009)

Pianist Xiayin Wang has managed to score with both of her first two discs; a mixed recital, Introducing Xiayin Wang, and some Brahms chamber music partnered with the Amity Players, both for Marquis. In Scriabin: Piano Music, Wang makes her debut on Naxos, and it is a little surprising that Naxos would allow Wang to go forward with this composer; after all, it already has plenty of Scriabin, played by pianists such as Alexander Paley, Beatrice Long, Bernd Glemser, and Evgeny Zarafiants. Nevertheless, Wang is particularly passionate about Scriabin and included some of his music on her first disc, Introducing Xiayin Wang; to have a whole disc of Scriabin with Wang is undoubtedly a boon.

Wang manages to cut a diagonal path across Scriabin's output, largely drawing from lesser known pieces, including the waltzes, poems, and pieces in genres he visited no more than once or a couple of times. These are often treated as afterthoughts by pianists in the course recording of comprehensive Scriabin packages, in several cases that's all you'll ever find of such works on disc. However, Wang treats each as a distinct and separate case, and she spins the neglected Polonaise in B flat minor, Op. 21, into gold, relating it to the Russian tradition of the polonaise with its darker hues and more lumbering, rhythmic profile. She finds what's truly "satanic" about the Poème satanique, Op. 36, a work that often doesn't get very good performances because its uncharacteristically bright, major-key sound seems at odds with the title; however, in Wang's version it is clear that this piece comes from the dark side of Scriabin's musical universe. Speaking of which, her rendition of Vers la flamme -- a piece Wang often plays in recital and is included on her debut -- is everything one would want it to be: muted and gradually emergent at the start, white hot and ecstatic at the end.

Some might comment, "so Wang has just managed to keep her standards up through her third disc; what's exciting about that?" Wang maintains a very high standard, and this Naxos disc continues to manage her recording trajectory much as it was playing out already; nowhere does one get the sense that Wang is compromising in order to conform to Naxos' usual requirements and get a recording made. That is a win-win situation for the label, for Wang, and most significantly the consumer, who will really benefit the most by virtue of this excellent disc.

Introducing Xiayin Wang
by Alan Becker, American Record Guide (December 2007)

The fetching young lady appearing on the cover is yet another example of the orient’s continued domination of the international musical scene. Wang is a native of China and arrived in the United States in 1997 after studies at the Shanghai Conservatory. Having been the recipient of many awards in her native country, she continued her studies at the Manhattan School of Music and won the school’s Eisenberg Concerto Competition, as well as the Roy M Rubinstein Award.

Her eclectic program begins with the Bach-Marcello Concerto in D minor and continues with Mozart’s Sonata 10 in performances of both technical accomplishment and insight. While making little outward attempt to impress, Wang does just that, as the refinement and understated beauty of her playing – particularly in the slow movements – is of a loveliness to draw tears from a sensitive listener. Her immaculate appoggiaturas along with a touch of romantic expression clearly separate this artist from the high level of average we usually hear from young artists today.

If I am slightly less enthusiastic about her performance of La Valse it is mostly because Wang seems reluctant to produce any sound that is not beautiful. Her sometimes strange rubato and very spare pedal works against the forward motion of the piece – giving the impression of starts and stops, though the closing pages le loose as they should.

No such problem occurs in the Scriabin grouping (Two Poems, Op. 32, Waltz, Op. 38 and Vers la Flamme). This is a world where touch and balance bring out the best from Wang, and washes of sensuous sound dominate the proceedings. Gorgeous is the only way to describe these performances that can easily raise goose bumps on sensitive skin.

Competing with Earl Wild, Wang plays two of his Etudes based on Gershwin songs. The playing is most refined, and the pianist obviously relishes the melodies and shapes them well. The pure Gershwin of Prelude 1 and I Got Rhythm complete this distinguished program by an artist we undoubtedly will be hearing more from. There are no notes on the music from this Canadian independent label, but don’t let that stop you from investigating.

Introducing Xiayin Wang
by Julian Haylock, BBC Music Magazine (November 1, 2007)

Xiayin Wang was already a leading prize winner in her native China when she arrived in the United States ten years ago.  The breadth of her repertoire is well demonstrated by this recital.  Bach's keyboard transcriptions (this one by Marcello) are notoriously difficult to bring off convincingly, yet Wang steers a convincing course between modern tonal sophistication and refined Baroque sentiment.  The Adagio slow movement is beautifully turned, the hushed, romatic atmosphere effortlessly sustained.  The Mozart Sonata, K330, is also delightfully phrased, meticulously weighted and free of affectation.  Wang's refined delicacy of touch and sensitive pedalling ensures that the music is texturally transparent at all times and entirely free of resonant clouding.

Wang's immaculate phrasing and finger-work remain deeply impressive in the malevolent waltzing of the Ravel, Scriabin's microcosmic musical implosions (including Vers la flamme) - even if the steam-cooker compression of his style is slightly underplayed - and Gerswin's reappropriation of popular idioms.  An impressive debut by anny standards.

Introducing Xiayin Wang
by Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

Xiayin Wang is a young pianist who hails from China and has graduated from Shanghai Conservatory; she has lived in the United States since 1997. Marquis Classics' Introducing Xiayin Wang is her debut disc, and her program is an ambitious mix of Bach, Mozart, Ravel, Scriabin, and George Gershwin, essentially combining composers from opposite ends of the piano spectrum and sidestepping romantic literature. Likewise, the opposite ends of the disc contain the best stuff, the Bach and two pieces taken from Gershwin's slim output for solo piano -- "I Got Rhythm" from his neglected Song Book volume and the first of the Three Preludes. It's a shame that we couldn't have gotten the other two, as they would have fit on the disc, but "leave them wanting more" seems to be the operative idea in this case.

Wang's Bach is superb -- she really makes the Adagio in this solo concerto, adapted from Benedetto Marcello, sing. The Mozart is a little less so; while her playing of the familiar K. 330 Sonata in C major is clean, polished, and attractive, it could use a little more heft; it's merely the weakest thing in a program that, overall, is not very weak. Restraint seems to be a hallmark of Wang's playing; in the first of Scriabin's Op. 32 Poèmes the little upwardly darting figures at the ends of the opening phrases are spelled out in pearl-like single notes, rather than as a flourish as is commonly done -- a nice touch. While her Vers la Flamme doesn't really catch fire, all of the various polymorphic elements that make up this piece are stated clearly as separate entities, and Wang has a very nice natural sense of Scriabin's elliptical approach to rhythm.

Introducing Xiayin Wang is recorded very quietly; one will need to crank it up to get the full effect. Nevertheless, Wang is quite an exciting player and has precisely those qualities that make the prospect of seeing this artist in concert appealing -- breadth of repertoire, sensitivity of touch, and a beautiful overall sound.