Vladimir Ashkenazy - Scriabin: Vers la Flamme (2015)

Vladimir Ashkenazy turns to the fine art of the piano miniature in this album, unlocking the poetic expression and vibrant colours of forty exquisite pieces by Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915). Vers la flame, released in April 2015 to mark the centenary of Scriabin’s death, opens with the C sharp minor Étude Op.2 No.1, written during its composer’s mid-teens, and comprises such late masterworks as the album’s title track and the five Préludes Op.74.
"... Reflective and sometimes indulgent, very much viewing these pieces through the prism of Romanticism rather than that of modernism. Ashkenazy is at his most winning in the early Chopinesque pieces, the Mazurkas Op 3, the "Studies" Op 8 and Op 42 especially, but his account of the phantasmagoric "Vers la Flamme", which gives the disc its title, as well as the set of late Preludes Op 74, are thrillingly persuasive, too, and he adds a Prelude by Yulian Alexandrovich Scriabin, the composer's son, who was drowned in 1919 at the age of 11, as a touching epilogue." —Andrew Clements, The Guardian