Piano Concerto (Scriabin)

The Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, Op. 20, is an early work of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915). Written in 1896, when he was 24, it was his first work for orchestra and the only concerto he composed. Scriabin completed the concerto in only a few days in the fall of 1896, but did not finish the orchestration until the following May (and only after constant urging by his publisher and patron Mitrofan Belyayev). Belyayev paid the composer 600 rubles (roughly $10,000 in current USD); it premiered in October 1897 and was finally published in 1898.

Klavierkonzert mit Alexander Skrjabin unter Leitung von Sergei Kussewitzky by Robert Sterl (1910), Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden.

Composition

The work consists of three movements, typically lasting about 28 minutes in total:

Allegro

The main theme is introduced by the piano and then transferred to the orchestra while the piano accompanies in octaves.

Andante

The second movement begins in the key of F-sharp major which was for Scriabin "a ‘bright blue’ mystic key".[1] It is in the form of theme and variations. The orchestra introduces the theme. The piano enters with the first variation, accompanying the orchestra's theme with arpeggios. The second variation is faster, marked allegro scherzando. The third variation is a slow funeral march. The fourth variation is marked allegretto and features intricate ornamentation; the clarinet introduces the melody, and interweaves counterpoint with the soloist. The movement ends with return of the theme to the orchestra, almost identical to the first variation.

Allegro moderato

This movement also develops material from the first movement. The first theme is condensed into the first two bars followed by a virtuosic arpeggio.

Recordings

Pianist	Orchestra	Conductor	Record Company	Year of Recording	Format
Heinrich Neuhaus	All-Union Radio Orchestra	Nikolai Golovanov	Russian Disc	1946	CD
Solomon Cutner	Philharmonia Orchestra	Issay Dobrowen	EMI	1949	CD
Samuil Feinberg	USSR State TV and Radio Symphony Orchestra	Alexander Gauk	Brilliant Classics	1950	CD
Roland Pöntinen	Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra	Leif Segerstam	BIS Records	1989	CD
Vladimir Ashkenazy	London Philharmonic Orchestra	Lorin Maazel	Decca	1971	CD
Aleksey Nasedkin	USSR State Symphony Orchestra	Evgeny Svetlanov	Melodiya	1990	CD
Gerhard Oppitz	Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra	Dmitri Kitaenko	RCA	1993	CD
Nikolai Demidenko	BBC Symphony Orchestra	Alexander Lazarev	Hyperion Records	1993	CD
Michael Ponti	Hamburg Symphony Orchestra	Hans Drewanz	Turnabout	1994	CD
Garrick Ohlsson	Czech Philharmonic Orchestra	Libor Pesek	Supraphon	1996	CD
Arkady Sevidov	Russian Philharmonic Orchestra	Constantin Krimets	Arte Nova	1996	CD
Konstantin Scherbakov	Moscow Symphony Orchestra	Igor Golovchin	Naxos Records	1996	CD
Eugeni Mikhailov	State Symphony Orchestra	Vladimir Ponkin	Vista Vera	1996	CD
Viktoria Postnikova	Residentie Orchestra (The Hague)	Gennady Rozhdestvensky	Chandos	1998	CD
Anatol Ugorski	Chicago Symphony Orchestra	Pierre Boulez	Deutsche Grammophon	1999	CD
Roger Woodward	Sydney Symphony Orchestra	Edo de Waart	ABC Classics	1999	CD
Andrei Korobeinikov	Academic Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg Philharmony	Mikhail Snitko	Olympia Records	2007	CD
Yevgeny Sudbin	Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra	Andrew Litton	BIS Records	2014	SACD
Kirill Gerstein	Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra	Vasily Petrenko	Lawo Classics	2017	CD

References

1. Ates Orga. "Scriabin & Tchaikovsky: Piano Concertos". Hyperion Records. Retrieved 3 December 2014.

External links

• Pianopedia, Alexander Scriabin, Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor
• Piano Concerto (Scriabin): Scores at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)