Piano Street's Classical Piano Blog

“Towards the Light”
– Director Oliver Becker’s Alexander Scriabin Documentary from 1996

This documentary on the unconventional life and ground-breaking music of Russian pianist and composer Alexander Scriabin sheds light on the mystical ideas which inspired him. He became consumed by a vision of a union of the arts, a coalescence of music, words, movement, light, colour and ideas , to create transcendent experiences. Contributors to his fascinating exploration of the composer’s life and work are musicians Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Horowitz, Mikhail Pletnev and Scriabin’s daughter Marina.

Link: Watch the documentary “Towards the Light” online

Alexander Melnikov’s extraordinary 2006 Scriabin recording for Harmonia Mundi tickled our curiosity about what was to come.
And our wish came true. Alternating in the roles of soloist and accompanist (with soprano Elena Brilova) , his latest Rachmaninoff recording adds up to one hundred percent presence.
Melnikov delivers some of the most intelligently musical and technically impressive Rachmaninoff interpretations available. Based on his direct sensitivity and deep insight, Melnikov has accomplished a recording with unique sound and colours.
The “Etudes-Tableaux”, Op. 39 and the “Six Songs”, Op. 38 (1916-17) can be described as the composer´s pre-revolutionary creative peak followed by a very long silence. In 1931, it was a desillusioned man in a new era recalled the past and produced the “Variations on a Theme by Corelli” (twenty variations on Arcangelo Corelli’s Sonata for violin, violone, and harpsichord which, itself, is a set of variations on the European musical theme, La Folia).

Alexander Melnikov had close artistic ties with the late Sviatoslav Richter, who regularly invited him to participate in his festivals in Moscow (December Nights) and his chamber music festival in La Grange de Meslay (Tours, France). In recital, Melnikov appears regularly at the world’s leading concert halls and festivals, and has performed with numerous renowned orchestras and conductors. He was featured as a BBC New Generation Artist from 2000 to 2002.

Audio samples from Amazon.

Russian tone-poet Alexander Scriabin composed his Mazurkas over a period of fifteen years (from 1888 to 1903).

A Mazurka was originally a stylized Polish folk dance in triple meter with a lively tempo and a heavy accent on the second or third beat. It has either a triplet, a trill, a dotted or even eighth note pair before two quarter notes.
The mazurka was a popular dance in nineteenth century European ballrooms.

Scriabin: Mazurka, Opus 3 No 1

These 21 musical treasures, entitled Mazurkas, have often been unfairly regarded as early immature efforts or imitations of Chopin’s 57 Mazurkas from some 60 years earlier, and therefore they have been neglected by many pianists. Stylistically, he was also strongly influenced by Russian composer Anatoly Liadov.

Scriabin’s unique musical vision here was transformed into something striking and original: mazurka-fantasies characterised by extraordinary charm and sensuality, often assimilating the style of late night improvisations.

Alexander Scriabin’s Mazurkas are now available in our sheet music library.
Scriabin: Mazurkas