John Ogdon has always struck me as one of the most variable and uneven pianists; at his best, he can be truly dazzling and inspiring, but far too often he is wayward and tedious. He shared the first prize in the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition with Ashkenazy, and his Scriabin Sonatas are almost as successful overall if very different--nowhere nearly as smooth and polished as Ashkenazy's, even somewhat sloppy by comparison. 　　If I were to characterise Ogdon's approach to Scriabin, it is a weird mixture of alternately brilliant and coarse playing: slow sections tend to sound stiff, phlegmatic and unromantic, whereas fast sections are often taken at frenzied tempos--hence, the occasional sloppiness. The perfect examples would be the 1st and 3rd Sonatas, where the second and fourth movements of the former sound dead (which though may be considered appropriate in the case of the funeral march), and the first and third movements of the latter are outright ugly. At the other end of the spectrum, the remaining movements (Allegro con fuoco and Presto of the 1st, Allegretto and Presto con fuoco of the 3rd) are equally blazing and thrilling--the Finale of the 3rd to the extent that it verges on bursting. 　　The tendency to rush his fences permeates both the 2nd and 8th Sonatas, often with blurry results--the fiendish double roulades of the latter get the best of Ogdon's technique. Also the 7th Sonata partly joins this group, until the Coda where Ogdon--just like Hamelin--takes the unintuitive approach of treating the climax as an anti-climax. The highlights are the 6th and 10th Sonatas which belong near Hamelin's reference standard--not for technical polish but for an ideal combination of suspense and horror in the 6th, and for sheer excitement in the glowing 10th. Also Ogdon's Vers la flamme is memorably exhilarating. 　　The least successful performances are the 4th and 5th Sonatas which come off sounding stiff, smudged and rather weird. The 9th strangely lacks the sense of urgency Ogdon brings to the other late atonal Sonatas, as though he--again, much like Hamelin--is trying to hold back or tame the demons. 　　Just as with the Ashkenazy Decca set, this EMI twofer is impeded by quite appalling piano sound. It is somewhat more natural than the former but, on the other hand, airless to the extent of being claustrophobic--far below the results EMI commonly achieved at Abbey Road in the early 1970s.