Rachmaninov, Prokofiev & Scriabin
PROGRAMME NOTES
written by AURÉLIE WALSCHAERT
Sergei Rachmaninov Isle of the Dead, op. 29 (1909)
Sergei Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26 (1921)
Alexander Scriabin Symphony No. 4, ‘Le Poème de l’extase’, Op. 54 (1908)
[all programme notes]
[read also: longread Scriabin]
[read also: Rachmaninov in the picture]
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19.12.2024 DE BIJLOKE GENT
20.12.2024 FLAGEY BRUSSEL
The Russian composers Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915), Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) and Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) have more in common than just their country of origin. All three grew up under the yoke of the Soviet regime, combined a career as a pianist with that of a composer, and tried in their art to break free of existing traditions. Albeit each with a different result.
Many people consider Rachmaninov as one of the last great Romantic composers and the most important successor to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Although the audience was used to his expressive melodies and deep sound colours, critics were not always so enthusiastic and labelled his music as old-fashioned. Things were quite different for Scriabin. ‘Is it possible to link a composer like Scriabin with any tradition at all?’, Stravinsky wondered. Scriabin saw music as a means for expressing his mystical ideas and to raise humanity to a higher level of consciousness. An eccentric vision that he expressed chiefly in his major orchestral works. Prokofiev likewise did not shy away from shocking his listeners. But alongside his reputation as enfant terrible of Russian music, he was also considered a bridge between traditional Russian melodies and the innovative tonal language of the West.
Isle of the Dead
Rachmaninov’s career as a pianist took him to Paris in May 1907, where he had been invited by Diaghilev to perform his Second Piano Concerto under the baton of Arthur Nikisch. During his visit to the City of Lights, he saw a monochrome reproduction of the painting Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead) by Arnold Böcklin. Between 1880 and 1886, the Swiss Symbolist artist had painted five different version of that work, and the series was so popular that numerous reproductions were on exhibit across all of Europe. The painting is of a boat with a coffin approaching a desolate, rocky island across the dark water. It made such a deep impression on Rachmaninov that he decided to put his impressions into a symphonic poem.
In less than two years’ time, he completed the score in Dresden. In the music, Rachmaninov suggests the movement of the water and the slowly approaching rower with a recurring figure in the irregular ⅝ beat. As the boat comes closer, more layers and colours can be heard in the orchestra. And as in many other works, Rachmaninov also cites the Gregorian Dies Irae theme, symbolizing death. Not long after he wrote the work, Rachmaninov happened to come across the fifth version of Böcklin’s Toteninsel. He was disappointed. ‘If I had seen the original first, I probably would not have written my Isle of the Dead. I like it in black and white.’
[Arnold Böcklin, The Isle of the Dead (Fifth Version), 1886]
Third Piano Concerto
For pianist Nikolai Lugansky, Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto is not only one of the most joyful piano concertos he knows, but also ‘one of his most perfect works, in which inspiration, technique and expression are in perfect balance.’ However, after the concerto’s première on 16 December 1921 in Chicago and the next performance in New York, opinions were. While the Chicago Daily Herald applauded the work as ‘the most beautiful modern concerto for piano’, the New York audience booed the composition. No wonder that Prokofiev left the United States for good in 1922.
Back in 1917, however, Prokofiev had left for the United States full of optimism, keen to give his career as a pianist and composer fresh impetus. A piano concerto was the ideal calling card for the purpose, and so Prokofiev began working on his Third Piano Concerto in the summer of 1921. He drew on some earlier sketches for the work, including a few thematic ideas that he had written down in 1911. He also reused a theme and variations dating from 1913, along with two themes that he had gathered in 1918 for use in a string quartet. He finished the cut-and-paste work during a trip to the Breton coast. One of his neighbours there was the Russian poet Konstantin Balmont. When Prokofiev played him a fragment of his concerto, he responded promptly with a few verses, as a result of which Prokofiev dedicated his concerto to Balmont.
Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto is the only one of his five piano concertos that follows the traditional tripartite form. Although it is one of the most virtuoso concertos for piano, it is not a typical bravura piece. Fast, virtuoso passages in a driving rhythm alternating with lyrical melodies that resemble his later renowned ballet Romeo and Juliet. And despite the criticism that the original was subjected to, the concerto has become one of Prokofiev’s most beloved and widely played works.
Poème de l’extase
Scriabin composed mainly works for piano. Only later did he undertake larger orchestral works, including five symphonies, which he composed between 1899 and 1910. Over the course of these symphonies, Scriabin wrote a clear evolution as a composer, from a more or less late Romantic to a modernist style. Along the way, he was also inspired by the poetry of the Symbolists and the philosophical works of Nietzsche, Kant and theosophists like Blavatsky. They helped him better understand his role in the world. Scriabin saw himself as a messiah who would change the world with his music. He viewed his birth on Christmas Day as the ultimate sign of this vocation. He gave this personal and radical vision ever more intense expression in his large-scale orchestral works.
With the alternative names for his orchestral works, with a preference for ‘Poème’, Scriabin pointed to extra-musical philosophical content. For his Poème de l’extase (Poem of Ecstasy), Scriabin himself wrote the poem that lay at the basis of the music. In programme notes, he explained the work as follows:
'Poème de l’extase is the Joy of Liberated Action. The stronger the pulse beat of life and the more rapid the precipitation of rhythms, the more clearly the awareness comes to the Spirit that it is consubstantial with creativity itself. When the Spirit has attained the highest point of its activity and has been torn away from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has exhausted completely its substance and its liberated active energy, the Time of Ecstasy shall arrive.’
Mysticism offered Scriabin not only a philosophical guide, but also inspired him to a new ordering of sounds, beyond the boundaries of functional tonality. The result was numerous modulations, a chromatic manner of writing and the so-called mystic chord – a dissonant six-tone series from which Scriabin drew the chords and melodies for a composition. In the symphonic poem Poème de l’Extase, Scriabin applied this method to drive the harmonic tension to the limit. The ultimate solution is heard only at the end, when the full orchestra plays the only consonant chord in the entire work.