Orgasmic

BBC music mag covermount cd time again. From back in 2002, the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Vassily Sinaisky play music by Scriabin, The Poem Of Ecstasy and Symphony No 2, in a live concert recording. Scriabin's composing career can be divided up into periods and the second symphony marks the close of his first traditional period. It's a patchy work in many ways, there are bits of Wagner, pastoral sections and an ending that borders on the banal and that Scriabin himself said was more like a military parade than the kind of translucence he was aiming at. If it is ultimately unsatisfactory though, it is an honourable failure. Scriabin stopped calling his large orchestral works symphonies after the third but there are plenty of arguements for calling The Poem Of Ecstasy a fourth. It is the first of the late period of mystical works and utilises large forces, although still in the context of a traditional orchestra. The writing is lush and virtuosic and comparisons to Strauss and Wagner are appropriate but it remains its' own beast. Maybe the title influences me but it conjures up nothing more than an image of a sweat streaked body thrashing about all night in a bed in the throws of some mixture of joy and anguish. The whole is decidedly filmic in the way that Hollywood was to develop. Unlike the banality of the end of the second symphony, this time the finale achieves the translucent effect and the victory theme hits the C major key spot on.