Piano Sonata No.4 in F sharp major Op.30 (1903) — Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Skryabin (1872-1915)

Piano Sonata No.4 in F sharp major Op.30 (1903)

Andante –

Prestissimo volando

In 1903, when he wrote his Fourth Piano Sonata, Skryabin’s feet were just beginning to leave the ground. He had liberated himself from his teaching duties at the Moscow Conservatoire; he had acquired a new mistress, for whom he was to abandon his wife and children; he was reading Nietzsche and he was developing the superman arrogance that would sustain him in his transcendental mission to regenerate the world through his art. The Fourth is the first of the sonatas adorned with such poetic (rather than strictly musical) directions as con voglia, quietissimo, focosamente, giuobiloso and it is his first major work in the, for him, ecstatic key of F sharp major. In spite of claims to the contrary, it has nothing to do with the death of his publisher and protector, Mitrofan Belyayev: apart from the fact that Belyayev was actually still alive at the time, it clearly aspires to a more elevated level of inspiration. In Skryabin’s own words, it is about “the flight of man towards the star, the symbol of happiness.”

Even without the direction con voglia (with longing) it would be clear from the Tristanesque harmonies applied to it that the melodic material of the Andante first movement represents an object of desire. Heightened at times by ethereal figuration borrowed from Liszt, the vision remains distant. While the opening theme reappears dolce cantabile under repeated chords high in the right hand and then dolcissimo under a filigree of arpeggios, the dynamic level never rises above piano and the movement does not so much come to a definitive conclusion as fall away in rhythmic and harmonic uncertainty.

It is the function of the second movement (which follows without a break) to transform the vision into physical reality. That end is not easily achieved however. Although the Prestissimo tempo direction is characteristically qualified by volando (flying), in its fragmented phrasing and dislocated rhythms the progress of the striving first theme is anything but smooth. The presence of a second subject in more even rhythms scarcely changes the situation and a brief but fff recall of the opening theme of the first movement in D major does not have the desired effect: it is the right melody but the wrong key. It it is only after continued struggle that the ultimate goal is achieved – the main theme of the work again presented in fff dynamics but now focosamente (burning), giubiloso (jubilant) and ecstatic in its resounding in F sharp major harmonies.