The idea behind the thematic programming of this disc is a journey from the earthly to the light, it is about the question of how life and death are connected.

Hailed by the music press as one of the most gifted pianists of her generation and recipient of many international awards, established German-Italian pianist and ECHO winner Sophie Pacini invites us on a very personal journey across the pianistic cosmos. In her own words: “On this album, I have combined pieces which have accompanied and reassured me in seemingly small, but ultimately crucial moments of my life.”

Firma Melodiya presents an album with recordings of Alexander Scriabin’s, Julian Scriabin’s and Boris Pasternak’s works performed by Ludmila Berlinskaya, an Honoured Artist of Russia and prize-winner of prestigious international competitions.

Shostakovich's Symphony No.8 was written in the summer of 1943, and first performed in November of that year by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated. Many scholars have ranked it among the composer's finest scores. Some also say Shostakovich intended the work as a ''tragedy to triumph'' symphony, in the tradition of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler. This release in Praga's Reminiscences series of audiophile SACD remasterings features an historic live recording from 1961 featuring Mravinsky leading the Leningrad Philharmonic.

Piers Lane is easily up to tackling the volatile figures that abound in Scriabin's piano music. Indeed, his technical bravura is often breathtaking … thankfully Lane never lets us forget that the virtuosic and poetic exist in equal measure.

This CD's title, Messe Noire, and its dark cover art may mislead some into thinking this album is filled with evil, forbidden things; but the only selection that suggests the diabolical is Alexander Scriabin's macabre Sonata No. 9, "Black Mass," and it comes at the very end, after Igor Stravinsky's light, neo-Classical Serenade in A, Dmitry Shostakovich's sardonic Sonata No. 2, and Sergey Prokofiev's witty but brutal knuckle-buster, the Sonata No. 7, which all have their dark moments, certainly, but not the same sinister mood found in Scriabin. If pianist Aleksei Lubimov's aim in bringing these Russian masterworks together points to some other unifying idea – perhaps the significance of the piano in these composers' thinking – then some other title might have been more helpful. As it is, though, this album seems most unified in Lubimov's vigorous style of playing, brittle execution, and emphasis on the piano's percussive sonorities, evident in each performance. This spiky approach works best in Prokofiev's sonata, and fairly well in Shostakovich's and Stravinsky's pieces; but it seems too sterile in Scriabin's music, which needs more languor and sensuous writhing than clarity or crispness.

Vladimir Horowitz possessed freakishly superb technical equipment, plus inspiration and a mercurial imagination that caused him to never play the same work twice in the same way. There has been no greater writer of pianistic works in the history of the instrument. There was never a better ear for piano color, and his performances usually succeeded in giving a work "the stamp of approval" causing his contemporaries to begin programming works he chose to champion. The was, and is, nobody who can imitate Horowitz, for his genius was truly a never ending source of inspiration.

Scriabin composed most of his single-movement fourth symphony The Poem of Ecstasy between 1905 and 1908 in Italy and France. He originally intended it to be called Poème orgiaque (‘Orgiastic Poem’) with its unprecedented raw sensuality and overpowering aesthetic, taking chromaticism beyond even Wagnerian voluptuousness. His earlier Symphony No. 2 in C minor adopts César Franck’s cyclical ideas to which Scriabin layered sweeping climaxes, majestic intensity and rich orchestral colour that enliven its five movements with ceaseless invention.

Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, universally known as the Pathétique, is among the most deeply moving and profound of all works. An enduring masterwork which Tchaikovsky considered to be his greatest composition. Once again the struggle against ‘fate’ is central to this symphony which was to be the last Tchaikovsky wrote. The première took place in October 1893 at St. Petersburg and just eight days later the composer was dead. Few farewells in music are more poignant.

The Fourth Symphony was written at a particularly crucial point in Tchaikovsky’s life. 1877 was not only the year of his disastrous marriage but also the year in which he began his fifteen-year correspondence with his patroness Nadezhda von Meck. The F minor Symphony has always been a popular work with its muscular and melodic writing. Infused throughout the score is the sense of ‘fate’ which Tchaikovsky believed controlled his destiny as he described in a letter to Madame von Meck, “the fateful force which prevents the impulse to happiness from achieving its goal … which hangs above your head like the sword of Damocles.”

The Third Symphony is in a more conventional three movements: Luttes, Voluptes and Jeu Divin. The same interpretative qualities apply as to the first two numbered symphonies. The Jeu movement moves a long at a smartish clip. Muti makes a good case for the work although its thematic material is rather slender. Outstanding work again from the Philadelphia brass choir.

The five movement Second Symphony is gloomily introspective but Muti again propels it along. There are some Rachmaninov-like moments in the allegro and wistfulness in the andante. Much of the doom carries over from the Manfred / Francesca tribute from Tchaikovsky and ploughs inexorably forward in the earlier symphonies of Miaskovsky. The Maestoso has a straining grandeur which takes a little from Glazunov - say in the finale of the Eighth symphony.

Muti and EMI make a good case for the oft-slighted Mahlerian-scale first symphony (in six movements mark you!). As a touchstone try playing the last two movements. The allegro has a strongly oxymoronic fusion of doom and endurance in its emphasis-accented undulating theme which Muti crowns superbly in the last two minutes of the movement. He is very close to Svetlanov in this. The finale's exalted hymn to art is wonderfully carried by the choir and the soloists and Michael Myers is outstanding.