Alexander Scriabin – Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 (1907) {Roberto Szidon}

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin; Russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин 6 January 1872 [O.S. 25 December 1871] – 27 April [O.S. 14 April] 1915) was a Russian composer and pianist. In his early years he was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin, and wrote works in a relatively tonal, late Romantic idiom. Later, and independently of his highly influential contemporary, Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a substantially atonal and much more dissonant musical language, which accorded with his personal brand of mysticism. Scriabin was influenced by synesthesia, and associated colors with the various harmonic tones of his atonal scale, while his color-coded circle of fifths was also influenced by theosophy. He is considered by some to be the main Russian Symbolist composer.

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Piano Sonata No. 5 (in F-sharp major), Op. 53 (1907)

in One Movement
analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._5_(Scriabin)

Roberto Szidon, piano

According to Samson, unlike his later sonatas, the sonata-form of this work still has some meaning to the work’s tonal structure. That means the sonata is arguably in F-sharp major (owing to the initial key signature of six sharps), but the sonata could also be said to be atonal due to its lack of a definite tonal center.

The work does not contain any perfect cadence, nor any consonant chord.

The work features one of the strange occurrences of the complete mystic chord spelled in fourths (mm. 264 and 268). Jim Samson points out that it fits in well with Scriabin’s predominantly dominant quality sonorities and harmony as it may take on a dominant quality on C or F♯. This tritone relationship between possible resolutions is important to Scriabin’s harmonic language, and it is a property shared by the French sixth (also prominent in his work).

The piece also contains an incipient instance of the mystic chord which helps illuminate its origins in tonal language; first appearing at m. 122, the set [0 2 4 6 T] is presented as a dominant chord with the flat fifth degree in the bass, later revealed to be an extended appogiatura to the tonic (m. 134), over which the same notes form a major 13th chord in root position. Compare this presentation with the ‘mature’ mystic chord, [0 1 3 5 7 9].

This is Scriabin’s most recorded sonata. Pianist Sviatoslav Richter described it as the most difficult piece in the entire piano repertory.

Notable recordings include those by Alexei Sultanov, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Michael Ponti, Samuil Feinberg, Glenn Gould, Garrick Ohlsson, Marc-André Hamelin, Bernd Glemser, Maria Lettberg, Igor Zhukov and Pietro Scarpini.

Obviously Roberto Szidon’s name should be added to this illustrious list.

Although the actual writing took only six days, from 8 to 14 December 1907, (in Lausanne, Switzerland) some ideas had been conceived much earlier. The initial nine bars of the first theme of the exposition, Presto con allegrezza (mm. 47 ff.), can be found in a notebook from 1905 to 1906, when Scriabin was in Chicago. Another notebook from 1906 contains the Imperioso theme (mm. 96 ff.), while elements from the Meno vivo (mm. 120 ff.) can also be made out, as well as sketched-out passages for a few other sections.

Scriabin included an epigraph to this piano sonata, extracted from his essay Le Poème de l’Extase:

I call you to life, O mysterious forces!
Drowned in the obscure depths
Of the creative spirit, timid
Shadows of life, to you I bring audacity!

Scriabin was very happy about this Sonata; in late December, 1907, Scriabin wrote to Morozova about the imminent completion of his new work:

The Poem of Ecstasy took much of my strength and taxed my patience. … Today I have almost finished my 5th Sonata. It is a big poem for piano and I deem it the best composition I have ever written. I do not know by what miracle I accomplished it …

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