3 Etudes Op.65 (1911–12)

Alexander Skryabin (1872-1915)

3 Etudes Op.65 (1911–12)

No.1: Allegro fantastico

No.2: Allegretto

No.3: Molto vivace

Apart from the last few sonatas, Skryabin’s late piano works are rarely heard in recitals, at least in this country, and they are not much recorded either. But if anything could stimulate a demand for the piano pieces he wrote after Prométhée, his last orchestral score, it would be the Three Etudes Op.65, particularly the first of them, which really is as exciting as its Allegro fantastico heading suggests. To listen to the parallel ninths in the right hand skittering at high speed over similarly awkward intervals in the left is akin to watching a high-wire act. It is such a dangerous piece that the composer himself, whose hand were not big enough, didn’t dare perform it.    And it’d not just a physical thrill. The sound produced by these theoretically dissonant harmonies must have been something quite new in piano music, and the three Meno vivo episodes (in 6/8) which alternate with the Allegro fantastico sections (in 12/16 or 6/16) demonstrate that ninths can be as lyrical as octaves.

The rather less perilous Allegretto second piece explores the potential of the seventh, another dissonant interval which in this case heightens the linear poetry by way of its fragile harmonic support.    A study in fifths – which are not in themselves dissonant but which by academic convention should not proceed in parallel – the third piece is actually more disorientating than the others in its highly volatile Molto vivace sections alternating with Impérieux passages of Lisztian heroism undermined by its own tritone harmonies.