Scriabin: 24 Preludes, (Lettberg, Stanev)

If there is one defining feature of Scriabin’s output, whether at its most voluptuous or neurotic, it’s probably this: freedom. (And if there were two I’d probably nominate an obsessive attention to sonority as the second.) So many of Scriabin’s defining tendencies – polyrhythms, trills, vibrating arpeggios, grace notes, misplaced accents, dominant 7ths, extended or synthetic chordal harmony as substitute for tonality – are all designed to erase the sense of music as a deliberate, performative act, and to turn it into a kind of spontaneous, refulgent, *sensory* experience, whether that experience is expressive or (especially in his later years) mystical. In this early set of preludes, encompassing all 24 keys, you can already see lots of Scriabinisms at work: notes arranged in groups of 5, with tuplets crossing barlines and accents placed such that that it’s basically impossible to hear the downbeats (Nos.1, 19), uneven or mixed meter (, 21, 24), counterpoint of a particularly lush and exultant k