Lecture-Recital “Scriabin’s opp.57 & 58: Analyzing the Crystallization of Change”

Scriabin’s Op.57, written in 1908, is a set of two small piano miniatures: Désir and Caresse Dansée. His next piece, op.58, Feuillet d’album, composed in 1910, in the same period as Prometheus, is also a small, one might may unassuming, miniature.

While quite unremarkable in size and scope, these pieces stand on the threshold of important changes in Scriabin’s style. It is precisely their condensed size and concentrated nature which make them ideal subjects for the study of the process of change operating in Scriabin’s aesthetics, akin to a slow chemical process of crystallization.

This analytical exercise will hopefully reveal meaningful information about Scriabin’s style and its evolution, his harmony, philosophical ideas, and ultimately, will allow to derive conclusions to be applied to the interpretation and performance of the composer’s music.