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 [ Ref. http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/KWIC/S/scriabin.html

I read the posts from Mark Reinhart.  Scriabin recorded a good
quantity of Edison cylinders but not in a studio.  Instead, he recorded
at home, mostly in St. Petersburg.  I have some tracks of these
cylinders on a CD edited in France due to the "Russian Week" in the
late 1990's.  It is extremely clear that there is no engineer, just
Alexandr Nikolayevich Scriabin himself (or his wife) accommodating the
Edison machine in order to get a more or less nearer sound.  (When you
put the machine too far away, it gets a very reverberated sound, and
closer to the piano gets a more crude sound.)

A very few years after the debut of the long-play disc format those
recordings were transferred to 33-1/3 rpm vinyl records by arrangement
between the Russian label Melodiya and RCA Records in the USA.  I don't
remember exactly the name of the album, but it was a three-record album
(about an hour-and-a-half of music).

I am a sound engineer, living far away in Argentina, so I have not the
resources nor the time needed for an investigation, but I encourage
anyone that loves this music to find old catalogues, call the music
companies, go to the Library of Congress.  I don't know who, but
_someone_ has the right information about that triple album (and/or the
record itself).  I see it registered by myself in the catalog of an old
record store here in Buenos Aires, more than ten years ago, but actually
it doesn't exist anymore.

Best regards,
Juan Manuel Bordiga
Buenos Aires
juanmanuelbordiga@gmail.com

 [ At http://www.amazon.com/Skryabin-Mazurkas-Op3-Preludes-Op11/dp/B000003HYX
 [
 [     Don't believe the nonsense about Scriabin's 1910 "cylinders of
 [   astonishing clarity and sonority," though.  They aren't cylinders;
 [   they're piano rolls, and the mechanical process removes most of
 [   the pianist's personality. -- Leslie Gerber
 [
 [ At http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=43:124847
 [
 [   "Scriabine par Scriabine"
 [   Publisher: Le Chant du Monde [288032]
 [   Release Date: 1993-11-23
 [
 [   Review by Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
 [
 [     Composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin did make recordings
 [   in the form of wax cylinders in about 1913, but these were lost
 [   sometime during the chaos of the Russian Revolution.  As a result,
 [   the only evidence left to posterity of what Scriabin may have
 [   sounded like at the keyboard is ten Welte Mignon piano rolls
 [   Scriabin made in Moscow in 1910.
 [
 [     This Saison Russe ['Russian Season'] disc entitled "Scriabine
 [   et les Scriabiniens" opens with Scriabin's rolls, to which the
 [   translation errantly refers to as "cylinders," as taken from a
 [   deteriorating tape of a Russian radio broadcast made in the 1950s.
 [   These are played on a clunky Welte in a bad state of repair in a
 [   boomy, bright concert hall setting, mostly at speeds set too fast,
 [   but in a couple of cases set too slowly.  For a long time,
 [   "Scriabine et les Scriabiniens" was the only game in town if one
 [   wanted to hear all of Scriabin's piano rolls together, and it has
 [   since been superseded elsewhere.
 [
 [ See also http://home.netcom.com/~scriabin/music/scriabin.html#disc
 [
 [ -- Robbie