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Scriabin’s short piano works

“Scriabin is not a composer who can be taken as our daily bread; rather he is an intoxicating liqueur, on which one can from time to time become drunk, a poetic drug, a fragile crystal.” (Sviatoslav Richter)

This deeply telling remark also sheds light on why the countless miniature masterpieces of this great composer are – unjustly – heard so rarely at concerts. Clearly, this music is hardly suitable a complete piano recital, for example. But the question arises in selecting a programme for a recording too, for both the performer and listener: how many of these extremely dense pieces can be played, without any one cancelling out the effect of the others? All three blocks of this recording aim to provide an ideal daily dose for the listener, with around twenty-five minutes of listening. In addition, within each block an attempt has been made to show the highly interesting development of Scriabin, in which a composer following the example of Chopin became one of the important figures of the renewal of music in turn-of-the-century Europe.

In the life of Scriabin this change of style took place with organic continuity but over a surprisingly short time. He was sixteen years old when he began the Op. 11 series of twenty-four preludes (1896) – and eighteen years later he had written his last work. The early preludes are characterised by an infinitely polished fine structure, masterly instrumentation, a transparent, refined sound-world, and although the mood is that of Chopin (the Op. 11 in F major would pass as a perfect Chopin prelude, Op. 17 in F minor as a Chopin étude, and the sound of the Op. 11 in B flat minor continues the sound of its unmistakable precursor, the B flat minor sonata), but because of the grandiose, strong personality of the composer we do not sense imitation. The Op. 11 B flat major prelude, for example, is highly original, with its two voices complementing one another, the rocking of alternating 3/4 and 5/4 bars, and the strange closure of the rests, or the Op. 11 A minor prelude, with its light, nostalgic modulations through a forest of keys. The Chopinesque form is naturally affected by being paired with the Russian mood. This Russian sound becomes, incidentally, steadily less typical of him in his later works; his schooling was also more “western” than that of his compatriots, and at times he lived and composed far from his homeland.

“I want to achieve maximum possible expression with the least possible means,” the composer said on several occasions. In parallel with the development of the giant orchestral language of the Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus, the form of the aphoristic miniature, sometimes only sixteen bars long (the Op. 31 C major, and Op. 39 A flat major preludes), would always remain important to Scriabin. The parallel that can be drawn with similar tendencies in the Second Viennese School a few years later is clear, but Scriabin’s music, leaving behind the early influence of Chopin, and discounting the temporary influence of Wagner in the middle period (Op. 39 in D major, Op. 35 in B flat major), sounds less and less like any music that had been notated either before or since. A heightened mysticism infused his principles and his music. Certain symbolic concepts became important: colours, flight, light, vibration (Op. 71 no. 2 or Op. 63 Etrangeté), fire. The presence of this latter is obvious not only in Vers la Flamme: we often come across it, for example quickly leaping tongues of fire are also present in Op. 52 Enigma written around the time of the Poem of Ecstasy. His emotional range moves from ill-auguring, prophetic intimations (the opening of Vers la flamme) and ecstatic calm (Op. 11 in G sharp minor, Op. 16 in G sharp minor, Op. 48 in C major, Op. 51 Fragilité) to a sometimes frenzied outburst of imperious pride or anger (Op. 37 in C minor, Op. 48 in F sharp major, Op. 33 in C major). Although his favourite keys were clearly C major and F sharp major, his increasing antipathy toward the minor keys (which were at variance the light he sought) slowly took hold over him with regard to the majors as well. In 1907 he wrote a piece (the A minor prelude, Op. 51) in which he took a last, bitter farewell from the minor keys, but he was unwilling to play the piece at a concert: “I would break off the keys,” he said.

He never did write the Mystery, which he intended to be his major work, and which aimed to unify all the branches of art and the whole of humanity within the framework of a strange rite, but he did polish to perfection a way of composing previously unknown. “I write in a strict style. Everything is determined,” he said of this in his last years. The major-minor system no longer existed for him. He adopted a new type of chord structure, built on tritones, fourths and thirds. The chord known as the “mystical chord” often appears in his pieces (prelude Op. 59 no. 2, Etrangeté Op. 63). The role of chords was now different from the previous one, which had originated the former functional system, and represented tension and release: in this music harmony and melody become one, in the form of a ‘sound centre’ in which the same set of notes can feature vertically as a harmony, and horizontally as a melody. Meanwhile in form, the late Scriabin strove for perfect symmetry, for the perfection of the sphere. The reality of the sound, though, is not speculative; this music always gives the impression of spontaneous abandon.

The pianist who plays Scriabin today has not undertaken an easy task. A pianist himself, Scriabin never played anything but his own works. The great Russian pianists of his time, Rachmaninov and the others, all tried to approach his magical playing, full of the crackling of ecstatic fires, but contemporaries report that nobody came even close to him. Only Scriabin could play Scriabin.

Gábor Csalog
Translated by Richard Robinson

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Gábor Csalog was admitted to the Special Talents department of the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest at the age of 11. His teachers were Erna Czövek, Dezső Ránki, Zoltán Kocsis, György Kurtág, Pál Kadosa and András Schiff. After completing his studies he was assistant to György Sebők at Indiana University in the United States.

He often plays contemporary music, and has a constant working relationship with many Hungarian composers, including László Sáry and Gyula Csapó. Since 1980 he has studied and worked with György Kurtág, of whose works he is an authentic performer, and of which he has given several premiers. Besides Hungary, he has given concerts in almost every country in Europe. His repertoire includes works from both classical and contemporary piano literature.

As an editor for Könemann Music Budapest he has participated in the new urtext edition of Chopin’s complete piano works. He teaches chamber music at the Béla Bartók School of Music and at the Franz Liszt University of Music. In 2003 he was awarded the Liszt Prize.

He has participated in many recordings, most recently on solo piano discs released by BMC Records: Schubert (BMC CD 084), and Ligeti / Liszt (BMC CD 095). He is the performer on the complete edition of György Kurtág’s Játékok / Games, (BMC CD 123), which is expected to be released at the beginning of 2006 for the composer’s 80th birthday.