Ravel & Scriabin: Piano Works

Featuring

Andrew Tyson
Alexander Scriabin
Maurice Ravel

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Composer's Artistic Vision

Franz Liszt, a virtuoso pianist, bequeathed a 'pianistic world' to composers like Scriabin and Ravel, expanding the instrument's tonal and musical possibilities beyond intimacy to the full spectrum of expression.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Scriabin's Third Sonata, dating from 1898, is described as 'post-romantic to the point of dizziness, richly melodic and with a fl amboyant sense of pathos,' exploring the 'torments of the soul.'

Composer's Artistic Vision

Ravel's Miroirs, a collection of five independent pieces composed in 1905, is likened to an 'album of five sumptuous autochromes' or visions seen with the precise eye of a scientist.

Composer Biography

Alexander Scriabin and Maurice Ravel were born only a few years apart in the 1870s and were both studying piano when Franz Liszt, a major influence, died in 1886.

Composer Biography

Alexander Scriabin, though born and educated in Moscow, was more influenced by Chopin and Liszt than by Russian composers.

Composition History

Each piece in Ravel's Miroirs was first performed by Ricardo Viñes at the Salle Érard in Paris and is dedicated to a member of Les Apaches, an artist group Ravel helped found.

Composition History

Scriabin composed ten piano sonatas, forming a 'spiritual ladder' and following the model of Beethoven's thirty-two sonatas, a rare endeavor for his time.