• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

SCRIABIN • MUSSORGSKY The music on this album describes emotions in Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 3 is truly a strong colors, in a passionate and unabashedly masterwork: its structure is very classical, Alexander Scriabin Piano Sonata No. 3 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 23 Russian way. The centerpiece, Mussorgsky’s its rhythmical elements are almost obsessive, 1 I. Drammatico [6.34] 2 II. Allegretto [2.39] Pictures at an Exhibition, needs no introduction. and its themes are incredibly gorgeous. It was 3 III. Andante [4.09] Ravel made it famous with his incredible written quite early in Scriabin’s life, but we 4 IV. Presto con fuoco [5.09] orchestration, but I wanted to go back to can already notice his sound world being the original version, as if trying to clear my created in a unique and unmistakable way. It 5 Etude in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 2, No. 1 Alexander Scriabin [2.50] ears of the beautiful colors of the Ravel, and is a rollercoaster ride, emotionally, but it is 6 Prelude for left hand alone, Op. 9, No. 1 Alexander Scriabin [2.44] dig out the typically Russian colors that I think masterfully held together by common elements, Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky are embedded within the piano score. I was small and large, and by a great structure. 7 Promenade [1.22] fueled by years of studying Russian piano, 8 Gnomus (The Gnome) [2.51] orchestral and chamber music and by my As an encore, I have re-worked the Chernov 9 Promenade [0.45] extensive travels all across Russia. In the transcription of Mussorgsky’s Night on the 0 Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle) [4.04] process I found the original “Pictures” to be Bare Mountain. The work was written in the q Promenade [0.24] just as colorful as Ravel’s re-interpretation descriptive style of Pictures at an Exhibition w Tuileries (The Tuileres) [0.58] e Byd o (Oxcart) [3.12] and, at the same time, quite different. All of a although the scene described is quite unlike r Promenade [0.44] sudden the piece, which I had heard through any of the “Pictures”. Perhaps only ‘Baba Yaga’ t Ballet des pouissins dans leurs coques (Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks in their Shells) [1.07] all my years of studying piano played by gets somewhat close to it, but Night on the y Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle [2.13] countless pianists, and which always struck me as Bare Mountain really beats them all in terms u Promenade [1.14] very powerful but uneven, made perfect musical of wild and truly terrifying imagery. It was a i Limoges - Le marché (Limoges - The Market Place) [1.17] and pianistic sense to me. It struck me as joy to work on, and to try to unleash all the o Catacombae (The Catacombs) [1.45] incredibly descriptive, much more than the sonic potential of my beloved instrument! p Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language) [1.41] actual drawings and paintings that inspired it. a La cabane sur des pattes de poule, ‘Baba-Yaga’ (The Hut on Fowls Legs) [3.15] Alessio Bax s La grande porte de Kiev (The Great Gate of Kiev) [4.55] I toured with it for a while and decided to d Night on the Bare Mountain Mussorgsky/Chernov/Bax [10.21] record my own version. I have mostly stuck to Total timings: [66.16] the original writing, although I decided to thicken it up in a few places, to give it a ALESSIO BAX PIANO richer, wider and perhaps more dramatic palette. www.signumrecords.com - 3 - Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin But Scriabin’s eccentricities aside, his Scriabin’s self-importance translated into that marks Scriabin’s work even during this Born Moscow, 6 January 1872 extraordinary oeuvre of piano music has hyper-competitiveness. In 1891, while a student early period, the Third Sonata is unique among [O.S. 25 December 1871]; endured, and, no matter the listener’s taste at the Moscow Conservatory, Scriabin followed his piano works in following a conventional died Moscow, 27 April [O.S. 14 April] 1915 for the composer’s “doctrine,” these works this impulse to maniacal practice of Liszt’s four-movement structure). The opening warrant hearing on their own terms. “The Don Juan Fantasy; after straining his right movement, marked Drammatico, has, indeed, In every sense one of Western music history’s cycle of ten [piano] sonatas,” writes hand from excessive practice and receiving a compelling narrative quality. It betrays a singular figures, the Russian pianist and pianist Jonathan Powell, “is arguably of the doctor’s orders to rest, he continued practicing Romantic (one might say Chopinesque) concept composer Alexander Scriabin has been, in most consistent high quality since that of with just the left, developing a strong of beauty in its fluid lyricism and evocative equal measure, an object of cultish fascination Beethoven.” For Russia’s greatest pianists and sophisticated left-hand technique. Three harmonies. Scriabin’s liberal use of the and scorn. Both stem from his utterly unique throughout the twentieth century, Scriabin’s years later came the Prelude for left piano’s bass register imbues the music artistic identity: the ravishing music that piano music has been essential repertoire. hand alone, Op. 9, No. 1, one of several with a folkloric quality. manifests that identity has won fervent (Count Scriabin himself among these, who works demonstrating this proficiency. The admirers, just as the persona behind the lent his exceptional virtuosity exclusively unfamiliar listener, with eyes closed, might The Allegretto second movement seems a music has drawn contempt. The self-absorption to his own music in public performance.) never suspect the pianist is playing one-handed – logical extension of the first. The music passes and off-putting egocentricity that so fueled so luxuriant are the textures Scriabin creates. from F-Sharp Minor to the warmer key of Scriabin’s creativity – in a word, his messiah This recording brings together three important E-Flat Major, yet remains fraught, owing complex – make him an easy target for our early works from Scriabin’s sizable output of One of the signature works of Scriabin’s largely to its rhythmic and harmonic derision. In 1905, Scriabin unveiled his music for piano. The Etude in C-Sharp Minor, early years, and the masterpiece of his early restlessness – perhaps even more so than Third Symphony, not merely as his latest Op. 2, No. 1, composed in 1886 when Scriabin piano writing, is the Sonata No. 3 in F-Sharp the Drammatico, which remains consistently composition, but as “the first proclamation was fourteen years old, is his first significant Minor, Op. 23, composed in 1897. This is and assuredly in a Minor key. of my new doctrine”; from such grandiosity, composition in any genre. The Etude bears the the work that most clearly asserts Scriabin’s the arc is not so difficult to trace to hallmarks of late Romanticism – a rich harmonic artistic independence from the influence of The long-breathed melodies of the heartfelt his unrealized fantasy-masterpiece, the palette, an emotionally intense melodic sensibility Chopin and Liszt; it is also this rapturous Andante, in B Major, teasingly avoid the tonic. Mysterium: a week-long ritual for orchestra, – that characterize Scriabin’s music during Sonata that captivated one Tatyana de Schlözer The beguiling tranquility of this movement choir, dancers, and (naturally) piano soloist, this time. The influence of Chopin and Liszt upon her first hearing it in 1901, two years belies its finger-twisting passagework. The involving lights, scents, and such esoteric is audible here, which would combine with before she became Scriabin’s mistress. Sonata’s finale proceeds seamlessly from the elements as “bells suspended from the that of such Russian forebears (Balakirev, third movement, as the second follows from clouds,” to be performed on the Himalayas, Glazunov) to provide the foundation of Scriabin’s The Sonata is cast in four movements the first. This music is infused with a new and which would bring about the apocalypse. early compositional language. (interestingly, in light of the formal experimentation character and vitality, as if revealing a - 4 - - 5 - complementary psychic state to the Andante – Rimsky-Korsokov, and Alexander Borodin, one “My dear généralissime, Hartmann is seething The first of Hartmann’s pictures encountered indeed, the third movement’s melody reappears of the five composers known collectively as as Boris [Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov] in Mussorgsky’s suite is “a sketch depicting a amidst the tumultuous Presto con fuoco – the Mighty Handful, a group that sought to seethed – sounds and ideas hang in the air, little gnome,” Stasov writes, “clumsily running or perhaps depicting the mercurial passage create a distinctly Russian musical aesthetic. I am gulping and overeating, and can barely with crooked legs.” The second Picture, “Il from one temperament to the next. An equivalent aspiration was held by the manage to scribble them on paper. I am Vecchio Castello,” presents another folk-like painter and architect Viktor Hartmann, writing the fourth number – the transitions melody – this one melancholy and understated ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– whom Mussorgsky met in 1870 through the are good (on the ‘promenade’). I want to whereas the suite’s initial theme was influential critic Vladimir Stasov, and forged a work more quickly and reliably. My physiognomy stately – representing a troubadour singing Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky bond between the two artists. can be seen in the interludes. So far I think in front of a medieval Italian castle. The Born Karevo, Pskov district, 21 March it’s well turned…” fleet third movement “Tuileries” (named for a [O.S.

Load more

  9

Copy Link