12 Études Op.8 (1894)

Alexander Skryabin (1872-1915)

12 Études Op.8 (1894)

No.1 in C sharp minor: Allegro

No.2 in F sharp minor: A capriccio, con forza

No.3 in B minor: Tempestoso

No.4 in B major: Piacevole

No.5 in E major: Brioso

No.6 in A major: Con grazia

No.7 in B flat minor: Presto tenebroso, agitato

No.8 in A flat major: Lento, tempo rubato

No.9 in G sharp minor: Alla ballata

No.10 in D flat major: Allegro

No.11 in B flat minor: Andante cantabile

No.12 in D sharp minor: Patetico

Skryabin wrote his first published piano Étude when he was no more than 15 and his last when he completed the Op.65 set three years before his death. Although the initial stimulus clearly came from Chopin, he developed the étude so effectively that, by way of 26 examples in all, he comprehensively absorbed the form into his own transcendental way of thought. In the end there is scarcely a trace of the hero of his youth. But it always was a more personal matter for him than it was for Chopin, whose études, for all their poetry, are applied to specific keyboard problems. Skryabin’s are about technical and expressive issues that were of interest to him in particular rather than to the pianist in general.

The Chopin background to the Étude in C sharp minor, the first (and shortest) of the youthful Op.8 set, is unmistakable, it is true. At the same time there are such personal aspects as the melody that arises in the middle section and the triplet against duplet quavers that give the piece its palpitating motion. Chopin was not inexpert in exploiting such rhythmic contradictions, of course, least of all in the Trois nouvelles études, but with Skryabin – as with his friend Lyadov who might well have influenced him in this respect – it is a prominent stylistic feature. It is there again in the five or six notes in the right hand against the three or four in the left in the urgent No.2 in F sharp minor. It appears yet again in the stormy No.3 in B minor, which is remarkable too for its asymmetrical octaves and, another distinctive characteristic, the ardent melody presented in three-note chords in the middle section. After that, the lyrical arabesques of No.4 in B major come as a timely contrast (Debussy’s Deux arabesques were written three years earlier, incidentally).

In 1893, working too hard on Balakirev’s Islamey, Skryabin seriously damaged his right hand – which, far from stopping him playing, encouraged him to extend his left-hand technique and, indeed, to write his Prélude et Nocturne Op.9 for left hand only in 1894. A consequence of this one-sided development is that some of the Études Op.8 can be uncommonly demanding in that area – like No.5 in E major, which is not only an engagingly tuneful study in staccato octaves but also a formidable challenge in its big left-hand chords. No less engaging and rather more Chopinesque, No.6 in A major is a study in legato sixths. The anguished though mainly sotto voce No.7 in B flat minor is distinguished by another Skryabin characteristic, which is the apparent dislocation between the two hands, the immense triplet arpeggios in the left being two thirds of a beat ahead of the right.

The first of only two slow movements in the set, No.8 in A flat major is not so much an étude as a love song, a sweetly melodious chorale-like confession written for the composer’s first love Natalya Sekarina and modest enough in technique for her to be able to play it. No.9 in G sharp minor doesn’t conform to the étude type either. As the Alla ballata heading suggests, it is a consolation for the fact that, although Skryabin accepted most of Chopin’s challenges, there was one major form he did not attempt to emulate. It is obviously too short to compare with Chopin’s ballads in stature and structural interest but, with its dramatically eventful outer sections offset by it quietly lyrical middle section in the enharmonic (A flat) major, it is has an epic quality about it even so. No.10 in D flat major returns to the étude mode in an exhilaratingly precarious study in thirds skittering in the right hand over and round an acrobatic left.

The second slow movement in the set, No.11 in B flat minor, is another song, an expression of characteristic Russian melancholy and a necessary moment of repose before the onslaught of No.12 in D sharp minor. Clearly his answer to Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Op.10 No.12, the last of Skryabin’s Études Op.8 is no less sensationally effective than its famous model. It appeared frequently in the composer’s own concerts where he no doubt excited much envy by his command of the not far from impossible left-hand part.

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