Scriabin & Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas (Remastered)

Album review

In a career full of odd recording projects -- a disc of Sibelius? a disc of Hindemith? a disc of Grieg? -- Glenn Gould's decision to record and couple sonatas by Scriabin and Prokofiev was not all that unusual. Indeed, the mechanized modernist masterpiece that is Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata might even have been inevitable -- how could the Canadian virtuoso have resisted the chance to tackle the work's staggeringly difficult concluding Precipatato? But what would the master of Bach on the modern piano do with Scriabin's sensual fin de siècle sonata?
The answer is, pretty much the same thing he does with Prokofiev's sonata, or, for that matter, with Hindemith's and Grieg's sonatas: he transforms them from whatever it is they were into pure products of his own eccentric imagination. In his 1967 Prokofiev Seventh, Gould plays with his standard hard-edged tone, steel-fingered staccato, and strong-willed rhythms. But while this fits well with the work's aesthetic, Gould's predilection for unscheduled tempo changes and unlikely tempo relationships distorts the work's structure to the point where its purpose seems lost.
Still, Gould's Prokofiev is far more successful than Gould's Scriabin. Making use of neither legato nor rubato, much less the sustaining pedal, Gould's 1968 recording of Scriabin's Second sounds wholly dissimilar from any other recording of the work. Because without legato and rubato, the work entirely lacks expressivity, emotionality, and sensuality, and thus lacks the very qualities that define the composer. As with the Prokofiev, there's no doubt Gould can play the notes; his virtuosity is, as always, breathtaking. But as with his Prokofiev, there's reasonable doubt that Gould has any sympathy for the music.
Recorded by Andrew Kazdin in Columbia's New York Studios, the stereo sound here is very clear and very direct. Also, it should be added that owing mostly to the music's fuller textures and louder dynamics, the incessant vocalizing that mars so many of Gould's recordings is somewhat less obtrusive here.

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