Fans of the mystically shaded and aesthetically rarefied keyboard music of Giacinto Scelsi will not need much prompting to snap up this 2006 disc, the third volume in Mode's comprehensive survey of the reclusive composer's piano works. With the eloquent and skillful pianist
Aki Takahashi in absolute control of this mysterious and evanescent material, the program is sure to please Scelsi's growing cadre of admirers and to give a representative sampling to newcomers of his work from three different periods. The Sonata No. 3 (1939) is perhaps the most "conventional" -- if that word can ever be applied to Scelsi's music -- in its form and content, coming as it does from his early phase; its three languid movements are densely chromatic and dramatically shaped, and sound rather like a hypertrophic development of Scriabin's methods in a fully atonal setting. The Cinque Incantesimi and the Quattro Illustrazioni (both 1953), and the Suite No. 10, "Ka" (1954), are works of the middle period, and are most typical of Scelsi's quirky personal style, often light and whimsical in character, but also punctuated with fierce palm tremolos and violent elbow slams, and structured to rise and fall between thundering cluster chord climaxes and gnomic passages of the sparest textures. Un adieu (1978-1988?) is a late composition with a dirge-like tread and tolling, impressionistic harmonies that are nebulous in their near-tonality but utterly final in their dark ending. Thanks to Mode's 24-bit hi-definition sound, this recording is clean, focused, and balanced, and it may require only a few adjustments at the heaviest fortissimos.