Book Description

Like Chopin, Scriabin made the piano the focus of his art. Among the supreme achievements of that art are the ten sonatas he composed between 1892 and 1913, works that abundantly display both his technical virtuosity and the exhilarating emotional gamut he ranged with such individuality. All ten of Scriabin's sonatas are reprinted here from the authoritative Russian edition published in 1964. The first four reveal the influences of the pianism of Chopin and Liszt. The subsequent sonatas richly display Scriabin's emerging impressionist techniques and his deep attraction to mysticism, which progressively conjured a more and more ethereal framework of sound, now brooding and introspective, now rhapsodic and exultant. In both their technical requirements and their emotional demands, these brilliant works will offer pianists a deeply satisfying challenge. Nonpianists will also enjoy this finely made edition, with which they may follow, music in hand, the growing number of loved and recorded performances of these masterpieces.