Stephen Coombs' 2001 collection of Alexander Scriabin's earliest piano works is a remarkably diverting album, and it offers insights into the composer's youthful development that may challenge some preconceptions. Scriabin's music from the years 1883 to 1894 was heavily influenced by the keyboard works of Frédéric Chopin, and most of his waltzes, nocturnes, and other character pieces may seem at first blush to be derivative and conventional, with few recognizable characteristics to suggest his mature course. But Scriabin's ...
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Stephen Coombs' 2001 collection of Alexander Scriabin's earliest piano works is a remarkably diverting album, and it offers insights into the composer's youthful development that may challenge some preconceptions. Scriabin's music from the years 1883 to 1894 was heavily influenced by the keyboard works of Frédéric Chopin, and most of his waltzes, nocturnes, and other character pieces may seem at first blush to be derivative and conventional, with few recognizable characteristics to suggest his mature course. But Scriabin's fluid rhythms and enigmatic moods show up quite early, even in such exercises as the unexpectedly dreamy Canon in D minor and the fragile Nocturne in A flat major. Occasional flashes of his ambiguous chromaticism and abrupt modulations can also be discerned in the harmonically daring Sonata in E flat minor, a sophisticated piece of juvenilia that already points the way toward the 10 numbered sonatas. Through all these student pieces, whether slight or substantial, Coombs presents the...
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