I played this piece in a competition once, and I remember feeling like I had totally nailed it. My teacher and mum were in the audience. My teacher gave me a big thumbs up on my way back to my seat but when I got to my mum and she said "don't worry honey, I don't think anyone noticed the big mistakes, the big pauses". Before I could explain to her that that is they way the piece is meant to be played, the next performance started. And so she almost fell of her chair when I came in first! However that really showed me an important thing about performance and that is as the audience doesn't follow you with their own copy of the music (like the adjudicator did) you need to tell them what's going on, it's all about the body language. And I guess on that day my body language read "nervous" so mum thought they were mistakes and not grand pauses. If I had been more confident then there probably wouldn't have been any confusion.
So. Scriabin. A Russian composer, inspired by Chopin (makes sense - I adore them both), and influenced Prokofiev and Stravinsky, although apparently he thought their music was crap.
Scriabin's compositions are very lyrical, this piece has quite a strong expressive melody line, and are also known for being atonal (without a key, or lacking a tonal centre) - which is why this piece lends itself to a slightly "off centre" unbalanced uneasy feeling.
And I must say, I love Scriabin. This piece thrilled me to the core when I first got to know it, and it still does. It's short, but says so much. If you don't really like the heavy expressive stuff than this probably isn't for you.
Any literature fans might appreciate a Tolstoy quote, who described Scriabin's works as "a sincere expression of genius".
I quite agree.
ps. see that thing I'm doing my wrists? I shouldn't be doing that. Tsk tsk.
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