The composer is always right as the composer, not at all always as the performer!!!
True, but when a great composer (particularly a piano composer) who is a competent instrumentalist plays their own work it provides insight into how he wanted it to be played, or it provides a look into another side of their musical being. They should be heard, good and bad. Ravel is possibly an example of the latter, (weak technique in anything not slow) but his interpretations of Pavane pour une infante defunte and La Vallee des Cloches (caps?) are strikingly original, and like this Scriabin roll give an indication of appropriate style, direct from the horse's mouth.
This is a bad performance and wouldn't pass any now-a-days critical auditioning.
It's a bit sloppy techwise but you cannot deny that there is an incredible personality present at the piano in this performance. As for "nowadays critical auditioning", that has come after the fact of this performance, and is irrelevant in evaluating it. My point in posting this here was to let people hear that "what was" often has little to do with "what is", nowadays. We would probably find performances of Liszt, Chopin and Beethoven bizarre and inexplicable, and they would find our performances of their works to be the same. If you are a note hound then Scriabin's playing is certainly not to your taste. But this roll bears out some criticisms of his pianism by his contempoarires, that he employed extravagant rubato and could be sloppy, but that he had a unique personality and an incredible power of expression. This roll corroborates written history, and so is a valuble document. To judge the past according to our own dictates is incorrect, and can only veil the truth of what was.
Topic: Scriabin plays Etude in d# minor Op.8 #12