Scriabin: Piano Transcription

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Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)Symphony No.3, Op. 43, "The Divine Poem"; Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54Transcriptions for piano by Lev Konyus (Leo Conus) (1871-1944)The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin is an isolated figure, eventually separated from the mainstream of Russian music by his own peculiar brand of mysticism, in which he saw himself in a Messianic light. Nevertheless his quest for a means of bringing together colour and music, the visual and the aural, technically impossible with the means at his disposal, has now been to some extent realised, while his harmonic and melodic innovations took place at a time when others too were seeking new means of musical expression. His relatively early death led to a subsequent under valuation of his achievement, which itself in some ways foreshadowed important subsequent changes in Western music.Scriabin was born in Moscow in 1872, the son of a lawyer, who, after lack of success in his chosen profession, entered the Russian consular service, and of a mother who was a gifted musician, a pupil of Leschetizky. After his mother's death and his father's decision to serve abroad and to remarry, Scriabin spent his childhood in the care of his paternal grandmother and of an unmarried aunt who pandered to his every whim and was able to encourage his obvious interest in the piano and in music. Following an uncle's example and that of his father's family, Scriabin joined the Moscow Military Academy, excused, for reasons of health, any participation in more rigorous training. Meanwhile he studied the piano with Georgy Konyus, then a Conservatory student, following this with lessons from Rachmaninov's strict teacher, Zverev, and participation in Safonov's piano class at the Conservatory, theory lessons from Sergey Taneyev and lessons in counterpoint and fugue with Arensky. Completion of his studies at the Military Academy in 1889 allowed him to pay exclusive attention to music, graduating as a pianist at the Conservatory in 1892, when he took second prize to Rachmaninov's first. He found formal instruction in the techniques of composition uncongenial, but was skilled at improvisation, modelling his style here on that of his adored Chopin.After somewhat reluctant publication of earlier compositions by Jurgenson, Scriabin found enthusiastic support in Belyayev, who published his work and promoted his concert appearances. In 1897 he married a young pianist, Vera Ivanovna Isakovich, in spite of his aunt Lyubov's attempts to discourage a match of this kind, It was again with the help of Safonov, who had arranged for the first performance of his Piano Concerto, that in 1898 Scriabin found employment as a member of the teaching staff of Moscow Conservatory. The next five years were spent in Moscow, until, in 1904, the help of a rich pupil enabled him, like Tchaikovsky before him, to resign from the Conservatory. Now increasingly influenced first by Nietzsche and then by Madame Blavatsky and theosophy, he settled for a time