Complete Piano Sonatas

By Alexander Scriabin

Very fine rendering. Nice layout. The lay flat sewn-binding makes it rather awkward to play from.

This reprint of a 1960's Russian edition has too many typos. A better collection can be built with Baerenreiter's volumes I, II and 1V, and Henle for Sonatas 6, 7, 8 in lieu of the missing Baerenreiter volume III. Henle is fine if you accept the idea of...

an Urtext with a lot of the editor's fingerings.

I'm probably biased, as I love Scriabin in any form or issue that his music may appear in. However, for the price it is, this edition represents fabulous value for money. These sonatas are extremely difficult, and they are for the diploma level player+. It's all worth the...

troubles just to play his Sonata. No. 5!

Often times the melodic line will go far higher than 2-3 octaves above middle C. Instead of using an all' ottava (an "8va") the performer is forced to read music at 7+ ledger lines above the staff. This problem also occurs for the left hand; when treble clef should...

be used, the notation stays with the bass clef. Sometimes multiple melodic lines will weave in and out of each other. Instead of using 3 staffs or indicating what lines should be played with the left hand or right hand, the lines (sometimes 3 melodies) are compacted together all on one staff into a quagmire of black ink. Sometimes the rythems switch between triplets and a straight 4/4 beat. This is seldom indicated in the score, and leaves it up to the performer to figure out what is going on. All in all great music making, but the notational shortcomings of this edition makes a lot of the music unmanagable or unreadable when it otherwise could be.

dense...ethereal..