Young Armenian pianist Varduhi Yeritsyan is a more than eloquent advocate for Scriabin, powerful and lucid even in the composer’s more hallucinatory and narcotic writing. Offering the complete sonatas in a mixed rather than chronological sequence, she stresses the abrupt changes from the Chopin-inspired (though already indelibly Russian) early sonatas, through the wildly ricocheting rhythms of the middle period to Scriabin’s final and rarefied ideal. She is on the best of terms with instructions such as l’épouvemente surgit (‘the frightening rises up’) or accarezzevole (‘caressingly’), and excels in the First Sonata’s demonic galop and in the Fifth Sonata’s alternation of volatility and sultry meandering.

In the Second Sonata (inspired by Scriabin’s first view of the Baltic Sea), she is no match for Pogorelich’s phenomenally articulate whirl through the finale, and she is less prestissimo and volando than either Ashkenazy or Hamelin in the Fourth Sonata’s dizzying conclusion. Again, Horowitz’s incandescent sense of Romantic polyphony in the Ninth and Tenth Sonatas remains unique. But if Yeritsyan offers a less vital or compulsive experience and, in the final resort, is less empathetic than Ashkenazy in his complete cycle, there is no questioning the exceptional command of her finely recorded performances.