A fascinating phenomenon in Western music is the large-scale music drama with a Faustian obsession and an apocalyptic denouement. At Wagner's "Ring", the audience has to be seated for an afternoon and three evenings. At Scriabin the marathon lasts even longer. His 'Gesamtkunstwerk' "Mysterium" was planned for seven days and nights (without an audience by the way) in a specially to be built temple
… in the Himalayas, with the aim of transforming all of humanity. It did not come to that, for Scriabin had exchanged all the temporary with the eternal before he could properly begin his worship service. All that remained of his plans were the sketches for a prologue. Scriabin connoisseur Alexander Nemtin has done an impressive job by elaborating these sketches into a feasible whole. This three-hour "Preparation for the Ultimate Mystery" for choir and orchestra has been released on CD for the first time in a performance by pianist Alexei Lubimov, the Ernst Senff Chor and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. (HJ) _more
