Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin
1872-1915


Scriabin goes under a special category of musical composers who were Weird Dudes. Perhaps the better adjective might be misunderstood, yet the further into certain composer lives I read, the more I am mystified. Scriabin fits this model.

Primarily, the composer worked in piano and orchestral music, with little outside of these areas. The composer began as a piano miniaturist, much in the vein of Chopin.

As a symphonist, his musical voice is late-Romantic early on, with the inspiration of Liszt and Wagner at his back, but he evolves into his own musical voice, with more than just a hint of Debussy, and at the very last a move towards a modernist style.

Like many composers of the 20th Century, his music gets more complicated sounding as he ages. I have never found his compositions difficult, but moreso, I listen with a curiosity behind what I hear.

Later on in life, he identified musical centers with specific colors, and indeed he developed a color keyboard which was designed to project certain hues alongside specific keys or chords. I had a chance to perform Scriabin's Prometheus with said Clavier à lumières, and it is an experience I won't soon forget.

His final work, Mysterium, was to be a seven-day-long event of music, dance, light, and scents set in the Himalayas to bring about a sort-of Armageddon, the kind for spiritual transcendence and an Earth-shattering reckoning of the human spirit.

I am all for spirituality and finding life within one's self; even mysticism has its curiosities. Yet, as with any worldly pursuit, going too far, becoming obsessed, and losing one's grounding in life seems a step too far for this listener. Perhaps it can just as easily be reversed to identify those who never go far enough, who never give all of themselves to a cause, either to better themselves or humanity.

Either way, Scriabin is an interesting case.

There are many solo piano works from Scriabin, so I have never dared to begin writing reviews for them. Perhaps one day... so far I have kept to the orchestral works.

Recordings and reviews currently on hand (Click below to visit):

1980: Symphonic Poem in D minor
1985-1990: Symphonies
1986: Rêverie
1998: Rêverie
1998: Prometheus: Poem of Fire
1999: Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra
2007: Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor
1999: Preparation for the Final Mystery