Born to an aristocratic Moscow family, Alexander Scriabin overcame a diminutive size, with hands that barely stretched an octave, to become an outstanding concert pianist. As the years progressed, he grew more interested in composition. Although he wrote a number of impressive orchestral works, most of his compositions involved the piano, including an impressive series of sonatas. The earliest on this disc, the unnumbered Sonata in E flat minor, is redolent of Chopin. Written eight years later in 1897, the Sonata No. 3, subtitled States of Soul, shows a marked progression towards the overwrought emotionalism that characterised so much of his music from the last decade of his life. The last of the Sonatas, the so-called Trill Sonata, is a work of considerable complexity and striking modernism.