Fabio Luisi and the DNSO Explore Scriabin’s Complete Orchestral Music
Scriabin: Orchestral Works features guest performances from Pierre-Laurent Aimard,
Julius Asal, James Ley and Ema Nikolovska, as well as the Danish National Concert Choir
The album will be available for streaming/download on 24 October 2025
As the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor Fabio Luisi celebrate the ensemble’s centenary year, Deutsche Grammophon announces the release of Scriabin: Orchestral Works. Presenting interpretations recorded at Copenhagen’s DR Koncerthuset, this is the latest album in the ongoing partnership between the DNSO and DG. It follows on from the orchestra’s acclaimed readings of the complete Nielsen symphonies and concertos, and from Verklärte Nacht, the first release in what will be a comprehensive Schoenberg orchestral project.
On Scriabin: Orchestral Works, Luisi and the DNSO are joined by Julius Asal for the Piano Concerto in F sharp major and fellow pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard for Prométhée, le Poème de feu (“Prometheus, The Poem of Fire”). Mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska and tenor James Ley are the soloists in Symphony No. 1, and the Danish National Concert Choir appear in both that work and Prométhée. The album also includes Rêverie (“Daydream”), Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, and Le Poème de l’extase (“The Poem of Ecstasy”). It will be released digitally on 24 October 2025, in time for the DNSO’s exact 100th anniversary on 28 October, on which date the filmed version of the Piano Concerto will also get its STAGE+ premiere. More of the artists’ Scriabin concerts are also available to stream now.
Alexander Scriabin was one of the most original composers of the early 20th century. From around 1900 onwards, his music became increasingly experimental, influenced in part by his synaesthesia, but also by an array of mystical philosophical and religious ideas. He died in 1915, aged only 43.
While he wrote primarily for his own instrument, the piano, he also composed seven works for orchestra, starting with the glittering Piano Concerto of 1896 and the expressive Rêverie of 1898. These were followed by five symphonies, although Nos. 3–5 are better known by other names. Like the earlier two works, Nos. 1 and 2 inhabit a recognisably classical soundworld – the former’s choral finale is modelled on Beethoven’s Ninth, and the latter’s rich contrasts have Mahlerian echoes.
By contrast, the remaining “symphonies” – Le Divin Poème (No. 3), Le Poème de l’Extase (No. 4) and Prométhée, le Poème du feu (No. 5) – are single-movement works written in a fantastical, shimmering new idiom. Prométhée calls not only for a solo pianist and a chorus, but a so-called “colour organ”, to translate changes in harmony into light and colour. A technical impossibility in 1911, this was realised for the DNSO’s spectacular Koncerthuset performance with Pierre-Laurent Aimard in 2023.
Reflecting on their Scriabin project as a whole, conductor Fabio Luisi notes: “I think that the great openness and curiosity of the DNSO is the perfect starting point for understanding Scriabin’s music, which lies in the tension between tradition and visionary, indeed even revolutionary, ideas.”
The DNSO launched its new season on 28 August with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, also part of its programme at the BBC Proms in London a week earlier. Its anniversary concerts take place on 23 October (Langgaard, Schoenberg, Abrahamsen), 30/31 October (Mahler: Symphony No. 8) and 6/7 November (Beethoven & Brahms), with special guest Anne-Sophie Mutter.
