Alexander Scriabin 1872–1915 Complete Études
2
1 2 3
3 Pièces Op.2 Étude in C sharp minor: Andante Prélude in B Impromptu à la Mazur in C
3’01 0’47 1’48
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
12 Études Op.8 No.1 in C sharp: Allegro No.2 in F sharp minor: A capriccio, con forza No.3 in B minor: Tempestoso No.4 in B: Piacevole No.5 in E: Brioso No.6 in A: Con grazia No.7 in B flat minor: Presto tenebroso, agitato No.8 in A flat: Lento, tempo rubato No.9 in G sharp minor: Alla ballata No.10 in D flat: Allegro No.11 in B flat minor: Andante cantabile No.12 in D sharp minor: Patetico
1’47 2’08 2’08 1’53 2’54 1’45 2’03 3’57 5’07 2’08 4’44 2’50
16 17 18 19
4 Préludes Op.22 No.1 in G sharp minor: Andante No.2 in C sharp minor: Andante No.3 in B: Allegretto No.4 in B minor: Andantino
1’25 0’59 1’06 1’24
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
8 Études Op.42 No.1 in D flat: Presto No.2 in F sharp minor No.3 in F sharp: Prestissimo No.4 in F sharp: Andante No.5 in C sharp minor: Affannato No.6 in D flat: Esaltato No.7 in F minor: Agitato No.8 in E flat: Allegro
2’13 1’07 1’08 2’35 3’17 2’00 1’19 2’50
28 Quasi-valse in F Op.47
1’49
29 Étude in E flat Op.49 No.1
0’49
30 Étude Op.56 No.4
0’35
2 Poèmes Op.69 31 No.1: Allegretto 32 No.2: Allegretto
2’04 1’34
3 Études Op.65 33 No.1: Allegro fantastico 34 No.2: Allegretto 35 No.3: Molto vivace
3’33 2’19 2’00
Dmitri Alexeev piano
3
Scriabin: Complete Études The death of Alexander Scriabin in 1915 at the age of 43, from septicaemia caused, somewhat banally, by an infected carbuncle on his lip, robbed 20th-century music of one of its most original talents. His reputation, which stood high at the time of his death, went into rapid decline, eclipsed both by the younger generation of Russian composers and the Modernist Viennese school, although ironically, at the time of his death, Scriabin had been at the forefront of tonal experimentation. He was remembered in the popular imagination for the lush eroticism of his few orchestral works, particularly Le Poème de l’extase, or for the vast project he failed to complete (or even satisfactorily begin) – the Mysterium – a week-long multimedia event of total sensory immersion, compared to which Wagner’s Ring cycle would have seemed uncomplicated and transitory. The grandiosity of his artistic conceptions with their overblown philosophical infrastructure has resulted in the caricature of Scriabin as a vainglorious and impractical dreamer (at least Wagner managed to bring his artistic theories to fruition). And although he undoubtedly displayed certain characteristics that might support such a caricature – a self-obsession combined with Messianic tendencies bordering on mania – it should not be allowed to obscure his innovative contribution to the keyboard repertoire in the 10 sonatas and the enormous number of tautly constructed and challenging miniatures he produced in his short lifetime. Scriabin defined an étude as ‘a difficulty but not a virtuosic one’ in which musical ideas are to be worked out rather than technical problems explored, and although many of his études do explore specific pianistic technicalities, these are never their raison d’être. He was himself a formidable pianist (although he came to dislike performing and always had a glass of champagne before a concert to calm his nerves), in spite of his having small hands which restricted the span of notes he could comfortably play. He also suffered (or believed he suffered) from a weakness in his right hand, having as a student damaged its muscles or tendons by overpractising Liszt’s fearsomely difficult Réminiscences de Don Juan and Balakirev’s Islamey (and possibly in the process exacerbating an inherent weakness derived from an accident in boyhood). Whether or not this had any permanent adverse affect on his pianism, Scriabin was thereafter always concerned about the condition of his right hand, continually flexing it to exercise the fingers or drumming them on tabletops (to the annoyance of those around him). For a period he was forced to practise with his left
4
hand only, which promoted a tendency to favour that hand, both in his playing and, perhaps unconsciously, in his keyboard-writing. Apart from the two works written specifically for the left hand (Op.9), the left-hand parts of his piano works tend to be more vigorous and wide-ranging, with the right hand rarely given chords containing more than one intermediary note. His performing style was apparently mesmerising, one observer remarking that when he began to play ‘it was if he emitted light, he was surrounded by an air of witchcraft’. Unfortunately he left no phonographic recordings, but he did create a number of mechanical piano rolls for the Hupfeld and Welte-Mignon companies. While these cannot reproduce the immensely subtle variations of tone he was able to achieve – he apparently caressed the keys ‘as if kissing them’ – or his extraordinary pedalling technique (his piano teacher Vasily Safonov recommended watching his feet, not his hands), they are able to provide some impression of his almost improvisatory approach to his music. Some composers are punctilious musical notators and expect their directions to be followed to the letter: Ravel, for example, remarked ‘I do not want to be interpreted, I want to be played’. Scriabin was, however, extremely casual in matters of precise notation (to the despair of RimskyKorsakov, who edited some of his works for publication). Few of the published editions give any indications on pedalling and many of the printed tempi markings for Scriabin’s earlier works were in fact added by his editors (and were to disappear completely from the later works). He adopted an extremely flexible approach in performance to whatever tempo marking might be shown, playing repeated sequences differently and accelerating or relaxing the tempo at key points in a work: for example, although the printed marking for Op.8 No.12 is crotchet = 110–112, the tempi in his piano roll recording of it change continually, ranging between crotchet = 64 and crotchet = 240. Those who heard him play regularly, however, confirm that such tempi fluctuations were consistent over several performances of the same work, so Scriabin obviously had a fixed sense of how he wanted each work to sound which was not precisely communicable through the printed music. He once commented, in the context of preparing one of his orchestral works for performance, on the impossibility of indicating everything in the score. Contemporary audiences became so accustomed to hearing Scriabin’s own interpretations of his works that when Rachmaninov played them at a benefit concert for Scriabin’s family after his death, the different approach he adopted was profoundly disconcerting. This presents modern performers of Scriabin’s piano works with an additional interpretative challenge of animating scores which are not necessarily blueprints from which they are able to recreate a work as the composer imagined or intended it to be heard.
5
It is customary to divide Scriabin’s output into three periods (although some musicologists detect four), an arbitrary division which obscures a steady progression from the late Romanticism of his earlier works to the atonality or post-tonality of his later ones (the seeds of his ‘late style’ being already present in his earliest works). Nevertheless, such classification permits simple categorisation of the études as early (Op.2 No.1 and Op.8), transitional (Op.42, Op.49 No.1 and Op.56 No.4) and late (Op.65). The most obvious influence on his early compositions is Chopin (whose scores Scriabin was reputed to have kept under his pillow as a boy) and he became, perhaps understandably, frustrated at being labelled the ‘Russian Chopin’, or worse, ‘the left-handed Chopin’ (although his steady production of waltzes, preludes, mazurkas, nocturnes and impromptus did nothing to dispel such misperception). The C sharp minor Étude, composed when Scriabin was fifteen, certainly channels Chopin’s spirit in its ternary construction (a format followed by most of his short works) and melancholy chordal melody, reaching upward and falling back against insistent repeated notes. Scriabin received no fee when it appeared in 1893 among the Three Pieces (Op.2) nor for the other early Chopinesque compositions published at the same time by Boris Jorgenson. He had graduated from the Moscow Conservatory the previous year with the Little Gold Medal (Rachmaninov was awarded the Great Gold Medal) but without any formal qualification in composition since Anton Arensky, professor at the Conservatory, had refused to sign his final certificate, principally because of his repeated failure to complete his assignments. In 1894 Scriabin was introduced to the influential patron and publisher, Mitrofan Belyayev, who immediately issued the First Piano Sonata (Op.6) and the Twelve Études (Op.8), paying him the on the same fee scale as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Lyadov, the most eminent members of his circle. Belyayev, although frequently exasperated by Scriabin’s behaviour, was to remain a staunch supporter, promoting his concert career and paying him an annual personal stipend in addition to the fees he received from publication of his compositions. The Op.8 Études are initially ordered in a pattern of ascending fourths, but if this was intentional, Scriabin abandoned the sequence after No.6, when continuing the progression would have introduced keys with relatively few accidentals. Triplet figuration is ubiquitous, featuring in almost every one, occasionally in both hands. Those of the first encompass an agile melodic line, first picked out in the third note of the triplet before breaking free in the central section. The second introduces another characteristic Scriabinic feature: cross-rhythms between the hands – five over three, six over four, etc. – ending pianississimo, such sotto voce conclusions being a recurring
6
feature of the Op.8 set. The Tempestoso marking of the third étude (neither this nor the Brioso marking of No.5 are Scriabin’s own) belies the prevailing piano dynamic with fortissimo only achieved for a few bars near the end. Triplets in alternating octaves between the hands predominate until bar 17 when the left hand adopts a steadier rhythm. After a hint of a false ending, an emphatic descending figure introduces a soaring melody reminiscent of Rachmaninov. No.4 begins a short sequence of major-key études, the first in flowing semiquavers (five against three, then against four) with a legato cantabile central section. The lighter mood is sustained in both the jaunty syncopations of No.5, in which legato right-hand octaves are set against widely spaced left-hand figures, and the flowing right-hand sixths of its successor. The mood darkens in the B flat minor seventh étude marked Presto tenebroso, agitato in which the left-hand triplets straddle the bar lines, creating unsettling cross-rhythms to which the chromatic chordal passage of the central section provides marked contrast. The eighth étude is a musical love letter to Natalya Sekerina, with whom Scriabin maintained a secret correspondence for four years from 1891 after her mother had forbidden them to meet following his announcement of his intention to marry her. Its gentle melody, repeated three times quasi-variation style in increasingly elaborate form, is the least technically problematic of the set. The next étude (the Alla ballata marking a nod to Chopin) provides an exercise in dynamic control, with abrupt transitions between piano and forte in the staccato left-hand octave triplets and calling for a delicate touch as the piece fades away to pppp. No.10 features skittering right-hand thirds against widely spaced staccato arpeggiated figures, while the melancholy folksong-like melody of No.11 recalls the second subject of the First Piano Sonata. The final étude is one of Scriabin’s most popular and regularly performed works (not least by himself). Marked Patetico (in the Tchaikovskian sense) the relentless left-hand triplets and heroic right-hand octaves bring to mind Chopin’s Revolutionary study. Scriabin presented Belyayev with two different versions of it, one of which introduced more subtle dynamic contrasts in the closing bars. However, despite this version conforming to the pattern set by the preceding études, his editor Rimsky-Korsakov chose the alternative, which maintains the relentless forte dynamic right through to the fff closing chords. 1903 was a pivotal year for Scriabin. He resigned from the Moscow Conservatory, to which he had been appointed in 1898 as its youngest ever member of staff, partly because he found teaching duties tiresome (he was not really interested in anyone’s music but his own) but mainly to avert potential scandal over a relationship with a student. He also embarked on an affair with an ex-pupil
7
Tatyana Schloezer for whom he was to leave his wife Vera and their four children in 1905. Having composed nothing for piano for three years – although he had written two symphonies and begun a third, Le Divin Poème – he now embarked on an astonishing burst of creativity, completing thirteen works for the instrument, including the Fourth Piano Sonata (Op.30), supposedly written in two days, the Poème satanique (Op.36) and the Eight Études (Op.42). A spur to such productivity was no doubt the need to earn money in the absence of his salary from the Conservatory, and his financial position was to deteriorate further at the end of the year when Belyayev’s death brought an end to his regular stipend. From 1903, Scriabin’s works begin to display the more personal idiom of his later style: a more ambiguous approach to tonality (in Op.42 No.6 the tonic is delayed until bar 16 and in Op.42 No.5 to bar 50), the prevalence of tritones and the incorporation of melody within the harmony. The first étude displays his regular trademarks: triplets and cross-rhythms (three against five), and quintuplet figuration featuring in five of the eight Op.42 pieces. In the brief second étude (which he described as a ‘thinglet’) the left-hand figuration is once more displaced across the bar lines until a few bars from the end when, after a gentle cadence, both hands scurry in unison quintuplets. The tonally unstable third étude, which takes its popular name ‘Mosquito’ from the unceasing chromatic semiquavers passing from hand to hand, contrasts with No.4 (marked Andante), the only lyrical piece in the set. The lengthy fifth étude, marked Affannato (breathless/agitated), was one of Scriabin’s favourite recital pieces. A tentative melodic line above restless semiquavers, first in the left and then both hands, gradually takes wing but the sense of soaring confidence is constantly undercut by the constant presence of sevenths. The restless cross-rhythms of No.6 contrast with the more rhythmically stable sixth-based triplets of No.7, which is reminiscent of his earlier style and may indeed have been written some years before (possibly in 1899). The final étude is one of the most rhythmically complex of the set, in which the figuration in both hands straddles the bar lines. It is also the only one to have a strongly contrasting central section featuring dense chromatic harmonies of tonally ambiguous sevenths and ninths. Although only two years separate these from the Three Pieces (Op.49), the latter demonstrate a marked movement away from stable tonality. Scriabin was also becoming increasingly interested in symmetrical patterning according to principles upon which he unfortunately never elaborated (although many exhaustive analyses have tried to unlock the secret) and which is evident in both Op.49 No.1 and Op.56 No.4 of 1907. Op.49 No.1 is a fleetingly short piece (as are its two
8
companions) comprising abbreviated triplets with a fluid tonal centre. Only the very last triplet in the piece is complete, introducing a rather unexpected resolution. Op.49 was to precipitate a temporary break with the Belyayev publishing house, which was disinclined to pay Scriabin the standard rate for such evanescent pieces. The Op.56 Four Pieces dispense with a key signature altogether. In the fourth Étude, right-hand triplets fly over wide-spaced paired chords whose upper parts in fourths (sometimes augmented) are enharmonic mirrors of each other, with the closing pair blending in superimposition. Scriabin composed what were to be his final études in Beatenberg, Switzerland where, as he wrote, ‘there is no music – only the cows produce art here with their tinkling bells’. These études display all the characteristics of his ‘late’ style, including the fourthbased harmonies of the so-called ‘Mystic’ chord which had permeated his music for several years. Scriabin anticipated the conventional reaction to the Op.65 works, describing them as composed ‘in fifths (Horrors!) in ninths (how depraved) and in major sevenths (the final fall from grace)’. Each maintains those intervals throughout their entire right-hand parts: in No.1, parallel ninths in rapidly ascending chromatic scales (Scriabin never attempted to play this étude himself, probably because his small hand span could not cope with the rapidity of the note changes); in No.2, parallel sevenths in the right hand against broken sevenths in the left; and in No.3, perfect fifth triplets against minor sevenths with a contrasting central section of ‘imperious’ chordal statements. David Moncur
9
Dmitri Alexeev ‘In lyrical and poetic passages the smoothness of his playing, coupled with its fluidity and delicacy, was breathtaking … Alexeev’s sense of colour, of light and shade, and his extraordinary command over the dynamic range, were beguiling. He really does have the lot.’ The Glasgow Herald Russian pianist Dmitri Alexeev is one of the world’s most highly regarded artists. His critically acclaimed recitals on the world’s leading concert stages and his concert appearances with the most prestigious orchestras have secured his position as one of ‘the most remarkable pianists of the day’ (Daily Telegraph). He has performed with such orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the five London orchestras, Orchestre de Paris, Israel Philharmonic and the Munich Bavarian Radio Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as Ashkenazy, Boulez, Bychkov, Dorati, Gergiev, Giulini, Jansons, Muti, Pappano, Rozhdestvensky, Salonen, Temirkanov, Tilson Thomas and Tennstedt, to name just a few. Alexeev was born in Moscow and began to play the piano at the age of five. One year later his talent took him to the Moscow Central Music School and then to the Moscow Conservatoire, where his professor was the eminent Soviet pianist Dmitri Bashkirov. While pursuing graduate studies, he participated in several international competitions, obtaining top honours at the 1969 Marguerite Long Competition in Paris, at the 1970 George Enescu Competition in Bucharest, and
10
at the 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In 1975 he was unanimously awarded first prize at the Leeds International Competition in England. Highlights of recent seasons have included several performances at the Leeds International Recital Series, of which Alexeev was Artistic Director in 2009, a return to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Gatti, concerts with the Helsingborg Symphony, KBS (Korea) Symphony, St Petersburg Philharmonic and BBC Scottish Symphony orchestras, and a recital tour of Canada and North America. Alexeev has made many fine recordings for EMI, BMG, Virgin Classics, Hyperion and Russian labels. His discs include piano concertos by Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Scriabin and Medtner, and solo works by Brahms, Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. Following his Virgin Classics recording of the complete Rachmaninov Preludes, which won the Edison Award in the Netherlands, BBC Music Magazine said: ‘He is a pianist at once aristocratic, grand and confessionally poetic. This is an inspiring disc.’
Recording: 19–21 January 2009 and 22–24 October 2010, Champs Hill, West Sussex, England Session producer: Ates Orga Balance engineer: Ken Blair Post-production: Dmitri Alexeev Audio editors: Ken Blair and Will Anderson Piano: Steinway model D Piano technicians: David Widdicombe (2009) and David Flanders (2010) Photo of Dmitri Alexeev: John Garfield & 2015 Brilliant Classics
11