Alexander Scriabin, his first and only Piano Concerto

Having just graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, at the age of twenty-four Alexander Scriabin was already touring as a virtuoso pianist throughout Russia and part of Europe. He realized then that the time had come to show his skills as a composer of concertante works to the public. So, in the autumn of 1896, in just a couple of days, he completed his first and only piano concerto. It was his first work involving the orchestra, so its orchestration took him a little longer, but he finished it in May of the following year. A fervent admirer of Chopin in those years, his writing brings to mind the pianistic language established by the Polish genius fifty or more years earlier.

Although the composer, prone to mystical thinking, in his later years was drawn to more sophisticated areas of musical endeavor (including a certain flirtation with dodecaphonism), he never stopped performing his own concerto, which he did quite often. By that time, the concerto had also become a favorite of his former comrade at the Moscow Conservatory, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who conducted it in 1911 with Scriabin at the piano. Later, it would be Rachmaninoff himself who would sit at the piano to play it, in a tribute made in memory of Scriabin, in 1915, a few months after the author's death.

A. Scriabin (1872 - 1915)

Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, opus 20
Premiered on October 23, 1897, with Scriabin at the piano, the concerto is structured in the traditional manner, with three movements in the fast-slow-fast sequence, with a length of just under thirty minutes. As already mentioned, the atmosphere of the work clearly evokes Chopin's pianism, but the orchestral treatment shows a much more active and committed involvement of the orchestra than can be appreciated in the concertos of the Polish romantic master.

Movements
01:34  Allegro - The piano introduces the main theme, and then the orchestra takes over while the piano accompanies in octaves.

09:30  Andante - I's constructed in a novel and poetic form of theme and variations. Although written in major mode, the four variations are imbued with a nostalgic feeling.

18:01  Allegro moderato - More intensely expressive than the previous movements, its main theme is condensed into just the first two bars, to be followed by an extended and highly demanding arpeggio, no small challenge for Scriabin himself, a virtuoso with small hands.

The Slovenian pianist Ana Šinkovec Burstin is accompanied by the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Krečič.