Scriabin's Piano Concerto in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 20: and Rubinstein's Piano Concerto No. 4 in D Minor

by Alexander Scriabin, Anton Rubinstein

This handsome compilation features major works by distinguished Russian composers Alexander Scriabin and Anton Rubinstein in a single full-score edition drawn from authoritative sources.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the development of the Russian piano concerto was left largely to Rubinstein. Of his five surviving concertos, the Fourth emerged as a powerful vehicle for both virtuoso soloist and orchestra in an arresting work that has remained in the concert repertoire since its first appearance, In fact, so great was its impact on the Russian scene that Tchaikovsky's immortal First Piano Concerto — composed a decade later — carries its strong influence in every movement.
Rubinstein's Fourth was a product of his mature years, by Scriabin's Concerto, Op. 20 — composed three decades later — was a youthful work, reminiscent of the composer's early idol, Frédéric Chopin, and highlighted by the same sort of inventive, glittering passagework. Scriabin's piece created a uniquely new chamber-music collaboration between piano and ensemble, filling the work with a sense of free spontaneity — even improvisation — marking a firm control of structural organization unusual in a young composer.

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 26, 2002

About the author

Alexander Nikolayevich Skrjabin (Russian: Александр Николаевич Скрябин) 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 metaphysics. Scriabin was influenced by synesthesia, and associated colours with the various harmonic tones of his atonal scale, while his colour-coded circle of fifths was also influenced by theosophy. He is considered by some to be the main Russian Symbolist composer. His son, Julian Scriabin, a child prodigy, was a composer and pianist in his own right, but he died by drowning at the age of eleven in Ukraine.

Scriabin was one of the most innovative and controversial of early modern composers. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia said of Scriabin that "no composer has had more scorn heaped on him or greater love bestowed." Leo Tolstoy described Scriabin's music as "a sincere expression of genius." Scriabin's oeuvre exerted a salient influence on the music world over time, and influenced composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Karol Szymanowski. However, Scriabin's importance in the Russian and then Soviet musical scene, and internationally, drastically declined after his death. According to his biographer Faubion Bowers, "No one was more famous during their lifetime, and few were more quickly ignored after death." Nevertheless, his musical aesthetics have been reevaluated since the 1970s, and his ten published sonatas for piano and other works have been increasingly championed, garnering significant acclaim in recent years.