Alexander Scriabin is musically somewhere between Chopin and Schönberg. His music is too modern for Chopin, and not atonal enough for Schönberg, but he added enough dissonants to create his own harmonic language. For that reason I am quite fascinated with him. On this record both performance and recording are superb, so that might also have helped.
Alexander Scriabin was born in 1871 into a noble family that traced its lineage back to the legendary Rurik, a chieftain of the Rus in the ninth century. During his lifetime he was both controversial and influential. He is seen as the musical representative of Russian symbolism, a school of art that shows reality through symbols, most of it in literature and poetry.