Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Скря́бин

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin

    Born January 6th, in Moscow Russia, Died April 27th in Moscow Russia. Although during his lifetime Scriabin was never out of the mainstream music world. However, he was ignored quickly after his death. It was not until recently before his music and ideas were resurrected and studied.
    
    Scriabin wrote five three of which were the "Divine Poem", "Poem of Ecstasy", and the "Poem of Fire or Prometheus". He also wrote 10 piano sonatas which are now considered a must have in professional pianists repertoire. 

    Scriabin's hundreds of etudes and preludes are considered to be masterpieces of 20th century piano music. In the younger years of his life he stuck to the romantic style music but in his later years he began to explore atonality. Some say that if he lived longer than the 43 years he lived Moscow would have been the center of atonality.


    As soon as Scriabin passed, Sergei Rachmaninoff toured all of Russia playing concerts containing only pieces Scriabin wrote. Rachmaninoff and Scriabin were colleagues and students together in the conservatory. When Scriabin and Rachmaninoff were students together Rachmaninoff was the composer and Scriabin was the pianist. It was because of  Scriabin that Rachmaninoff was able to launch is piano career later in his life. 


Enjoy Horowitz play one of Scriabin's piano Etudes.
Op 8 No. 12

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