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SCRIABIN: Symphony No. 3 / Poem of Ecstasy

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SCRIABIN: Symphony No. 3 / Poem of Ecstasy

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Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) Symphony No.3, (Le Po�me Divin), Op. 43 Le Po�me de I'extase, Op. 54 "The only true romantic musician produced by...

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Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)

Symphony No.3, (Le Po�me Divin), Op. 43

Le Po�me de I'extase, Op. 54

"The only true romantic musician produced by Russia," in the words of his friend Boris de Schloezer in 1919, Scriabin, a contemporary of Rasputin, was a loner, emotionally, temperamentally and stylistically removed from the last Tsarists to whose number he belonged historically. In the Mahlerian sense, his philosophy, spiritual and physical, was an embracement of the world. He spent his hours in mystic contemplation, in psychic transcendence. He spent his days looking for ecstasy, the "highest rising of activity ...the summit". He spent his years loving womankind. He spent a whole life worshipping the private mysterium of an astral neosphere only he knew anything about.. "I will ignite your imagination with the delight of my promise. I will bedeck you in the excellence of my dreams. I will veil the sky of your wishes with the sparkling stars of my creation. I bring not truth, but freedom".

One of the legendary cosmic soul journeys of the twentieth century - massively imagined, massively realised, massively risky - the cyclic Third Symphony in C minor, the Divine Poem (1902-04), dates from a time of significant change in Scriabin's life, during which period he left his teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory, read Nietzsche and Marx, seduced pubescent girls, abandoned his wife Vera and four children for a new young mistress, Tatyana, and went to live in lake-land Switzerland in the hope that such a refuge might release new ideas within him. Years later, the early writing of the symphony, at a country dacha near Maloyaroslavets during the spring of 1903, was vividly remembered by Pasternak: "Just as sun and shade alternated in the forest and birds sang and flew from one branch, bits and pieces from the Divine Poem, which was being composed at the piano in the next-door dacha, were flying and rolling in the air. Oh God, what a music it was!

The symphony was crashing and collapsing again and again, like a town under artillery fire, and then building and growing again out of the wreckage and ruins. It was brimming with an essence chiselled out to the point of insanity, and as new as the forest was new, full of life and breathing freshness". In November 1903 Scriabin played through the piano draft "for the crowd of St. Petersburg composers, and what a surprise! Glazunov was delighted and Rimsky-Korsakov was also very favourable". Announced as "a grandiose creation which transports the listener fantastically into another world", the first "manifestation" took place in Paris on 29th May 1905, under Nikisch for a fee of $750. The Russian premiere in St Petersburg, on 8th March 1906, with Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev at the rehearsals, was directed by Felix Blumenfeld.

The French language "programme" of the work -not so much Scriabin's (lost) poem as a condensed explanation, by Tatyana and de Schloezer, her brother -centres on the Ego, divided into Man-God and Slave-Man. These forces struggle with each other, experience the discord and concord of human experience, and finally through unity and blissful ecstasy attain freedom "in the sky of other worlds". There are three principal (sonata-form) chapters: "Struggles" (Allegro, "mysterious, tragic", "red" C minor); "Sensuous Delights" (Lento, "sublime", "whitish-blue" E major -the distinguishing key contrast of not only Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and Rachmaninov's Second but also Liszt's Faust Symphony); and "Divine Play" (Allegro, "with radiant joy", "red" C major). A short germinal Prologue (Lento, C minor) encloses a trinity of leitmotifs: "Divine Grandeur" (a unisonal bass idea derived from the opening of the unfinished D minor Symphonic Poem [Allegro] of 1896-97, Naxos 8.553587); "Summons to Man"; and "Fear to approach, suggestive of Flight". These are combined with, or are the source of, the many various ideas running through the work, reaching a climax in the so-called Ego theme (second subject) of the finale.

Related to the Fifth Piano Sonata and scored for a large orchestra including eight horns, "Russian" bells, organ, multiply divided strings and solo violin, the C major Poem of Ecstasy or Fourth Symphony (conceived 1905, completed summer 1907 - January 1908) was first heard in New York on 10th December 1908 (Modest Altschuler), the Russian public premiere following in St Petersburg on 31st January 1909 (Blumenfeld). "The nerves of the audience were worn and racked as nerves are seldom assailed even in these days," ventured W. J. Henderson in the New York Sun. "The hero of the concert was Scriabin, composer, who is not yet forty but whose already well-known name ignites the most fervent controversies: for some his music is utter nonsense, for others it is a revelation of genius... After the performance of the Poem of Ecstasy under the baton of Blumenfeld, the composer was wildly called for, and his success was enormous" (Rech, 2nd February; 1909). "What a work of genius!" Prokofiev enthused (along with Miaskovsky) - "But later, when the intellectual coldness of some of Scriabin's 'flights' became discernible, that opinion had to be downgraded a bit". This "radiant poem," Scriabin's pupil, the pianist Maria Nemenov-Lunz, recalled, "was composed in a tiny half-dark garret rented from the owner of a greengrocer's [in Bogliasco on the Italian Riviera]. There was a jolly din and hum of voices in the shop from early morning until late into the night... for composing he had a broken piano, which was a tone-and-a-half lower than normal pitch and was rented from a cafe.

Trains roared past the windows. Despite all this, despite constant worries about making ends meet, Alexander never uttered a word of complaint... he was working on his new composition in ecstasy, with feverish enthusiasm". The hundreds of surviving sketches and changes show just how hard he had to labour over his creation.

Structurally, the music is in the form of a single-movement tone-poem consisting of a tripartite sonata Allegro volando (exposition, development, reprise) flanked by a double motif slow prologue (Andante, lento: "human striving after the ideal" [longing theme, flute], the Ego [dream theme, clarinet]) and a quick, diatonically affirmative coda (Allegro molto). The sonata core features three subject groups: (a) "The Soaring Flight of the Spirit" (flute), (b) Human Love (solo violin, the receptive female), and (c) "The Will to Rise" (trumpet, the phallic male [victory theme]), Scriabin intended the whole to be an orgiastic, orgasmic excitation and release through mounting climax: descriptively, the final blinding gush of "red" C major spells "the union of the Cosmic Eros in the final act of love between the male principle of the Creator and the Woman-World". And he wrote a theosophical/symbolist poem to go with it, the self-assertion, the "I am" of the Spirit, which he was wont to recite to anyone who would listen.

Realising, however, that its independence from the sound event might confuse, he withheld it from the published score, advising instead that "conductors ...should start by approaching [the work] as pure music". Pictorial, associative suggestion nevertheless always remained important, "When you listen to Ecstasy, look straight into the eye of the Sun!"

Ates Orga, 1996

Moscow Symphony Orchestra

The Moscow Symphony Orchestra was established in 1989 and was under the direction of the distinguished French musician Antonio de Almeida until his death in 1997. The members of the orchestra include prize-winners and laureates of International and Russian music competitions, graduates of the conservatories of Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, who have played under conductors such as Svetlanov, Rozhdestvensky, Mravinsky and Ozawa, in Russia and throughout the world. The orchestra toured in 1991 to Finland and to England, where their collaboration with a well known rock band demonstrated readiness for experiment. A British and Japanese commission has brought a series of twelve television programmes for international distribution and in 1993 there was a highly successful tour of Spain. The Moscow Symphony Orchestra has a wide repertoire, with particular expertise in the performance of contemporary works.

Igor Golovschin

The Russian conductor Igor Golovschin was born in Moscow in 1956 and entered the piano class of the Special Music School at the age of six. In 1975 he joined the class of Kyril Kondrashin at the Moscow Conservatory and in 1981 joined the Irkutsk Symphony Orchestra, winning the Herbert von Karajan Conductors' Competition in the following year, followed in 1983 by victory in the Moscow National Conductors' Competition. Five years later he was invited to join the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, where he is assistant to Yevgeny Svetlanov. With this orchestra he has toured throughout Europe and as far afield as Japan.

Disc 1

Symphony No. 3

(more info)

Performed by: Moscow Symphony Orchestra
Composed by: Alexander Scriabin
Conducted by: Igor Golovschin
Dmitri Lokalenkov, trumpet
Recording date: September 1995
Produced by: Betta International, Inc.

Lento - 1:36
Luttes (Struggles) - 25:37:00
Voluptes (Delights) - 13:44
Jeu divin (Divine Play) - 11:10

La Poeme de l'extase

(more info)

Performed by: Moscow Symphony Orchestra
Composed by: Alexander Scriabin
Conducted by: Igor Golovschin
Dmitri Lokalenkov, trumpet
Recording date: September 1995
Produced by: Betta International, Inc.

Le Poeme de l'extase, Op. 54 - 24:10:00

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Composer(s):
Scriabin, Alexander

Conductor(s):
Golovschin, Igor

Orchestra(s):
Moscow Symphony Orchestra

Artist(s):
Lokalenkov, Dmitri

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099458221
Item Number: 8553582
Release Date: Sep 3, 1997