Alexander Scriabin - Feuillet d’Album Op. 58

- Composer: Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (6 January 1872 -- 27 April 1915) - Performer: Joseph Villa - Year of recording: 1989 Feuillet d’album [album leaf] for piano, Op. 58, written in 1910. Not to be confused with the 1905 Feuillet d’Album in F sharp major, or two other earlier pieces entitled Feuillet d’album -- the first, without opus number, dating to 1889 (in A flat major) and the second in the 3 Morceaux, Op. 45/1 (1904 -1905) -- this nocturne is stylistically more advanced than its earlier namesakes, exhibiting that mystical, otherworldly quality associated with late Scriabin, and has some figurations which would be used in the Poème-Nocturne Op. 61, written a year later. Cool and distant, the music here is cool and seems to convey a sense of wandering or floating. Sparsely textured, the writing displays advanced harmonic structures. The piece opens quietly, the notes sounding tentative as if gingerly testing the sonic waters to find a thematic stream to swim in. Somewhat impressionistic, the music nevertheless seems to evoke netherworlds or astral spheres. The strange main theme emerges from the hesitant murk of the opening, and soon taking on an energetic demeanor. After a while, however, the theme retreats to a ponderous manner and fades at the end, the music sounding more tentative than at the opening.