Piano Concerto in F sharp minor Op.20

When Scriabin and Rachmanimov left the Moscow Conservatoire at much the same age in 1892, Scriabin was awarded the Small Gold Medal and Rachmaninov the Great Gold Medal. Except in the period of Scriabin’s greatest fame and messianic ambition in his late 30s and early 40s, when nothing less than the Holy Grail would have been an acceptable award, public opinion has endorsed the Conservatoire’s assessment of the relative merits of the two composer-pianists.

That, however, is no good reason for the neglect of Scriabin’s Piano Concerto. In 1896 when he wrote it his colleague Rachmaninov was still five years away from completing the concerto, the Second in C minor, that would definitively eclipse Scriabin’s in popularity. While it is true that the Piano Concerto in F sharp minor reveals the young composer’s addiction to Chopin, it also offers some small but fascinating anticipations of Rachmaninov – who, incidentally, liked the work enough to perform it on several occasions.

From the first entry of the piano, after a few quiet bars of orchestral introduction, the influence of Chopin is unmistakable. Introduced by the soloist, the main theme runs into a flow of quavers which, far from drying up when the melody passes to the violins, is transformed into decorative quaver triplets. The piano also introduces the second subject, a quicker scherzando idea ringing in octaves high on the keyboard. Intimations of Rachmaninov are heard after the restoration of the slower tempo and not far into the development section where violas and cellos make passing melodic allusions under semiquaver figuration on the piano. The climax of the movement, a passionate fff expansion of the main theme on the piano taken up at its height by the whole orchestra, immediately precedes the recapitulation.

It is already clear from the first movement that the orchestra, not least the principal horn, has a far more interesting part to play in Scriabin’s Piano Concerto than in either of Chopin’s. In the Andante, a theme and four variations, the tenderly expressive theme on which it is based is introduced by muted strings in F sharp major and in the expressive first variation the same melodic line is sustained by a solo clarinet while the piano weaves a delicate tracery of semiquavers round it. The much quicker second variation is a brilliant scherzo featuring the soloist’s rhythmically resourceful right hand over staccato octaves in the left. Another contrast is secured by the Adagio third variation where a solemn piano part, confined largely to the lower half of the keyboard, is coloured by the lightest of touches on muted strings. In the Allegretto fourth variation the original theme is recalled by the violins in something like its original form under highly decorative piano figuration in the upper half of the keyboard. The movement end with a quiet Andante coda.

There is no escaping Chopin in the third movement, the opening theme of which is a vigorous mazurka in F sharp minor clearly inspired by admiration of the Polish composer. As in the first movement, however, memories of Chopin are offset by anticipations of Rachmaninov – most clearly when it comes to the second subject introduced by the soloist with modest wind accompaniment. The same sound, magnified in an appassionato climax, occurs when the second subject is recalled in F sharp major. That event so changes the situation that the mazurka theme is encouraged to drop its minor harmonies and celebrate its transformed personality in a hugely triumphant coda.

Gerald Larner © 2015