Wu, Jun Lin
Chopin, Scriabin: Tudes And Other Piano Works
Chopin and Scriabin retrace a genealogy of pianism from tactile song to harmony ignited by ecstasy. In the Variations brillantes op. 12, the Trois nouvelles tudes, the Berceuse op. 57 and the Polonaise op. 44, Chopin makes touch, breath, ornament and time structural: technique becomes an education of listening and a form of memory. Scriabins Twelve tudes op. 8 inherit this grammar and submit it to a new pressure of extensions, collisions, rhythmic instability and harmonic tension. The Fantasie in B minor op. 28 finally drives sonata form towards a more fevered and visionary inner theatre. The album thus reveals not merely a line of influence, but a metamorphosis in the very idea of pianistic expression at the threshold of modernity, where lyric utterance becomes incandescent aspiration.