Alexander Scriabin - Piano Sonata No.8, Op.66 (Sofronitsky)

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Alexander Scriabin (1870 - 1915)
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Piano Sonata No.8, Op.66 (1913)
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Vladimir Sofronitsky (1901 - 1961)
Recorded in 1958
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The Piano Sonata No. 8, Op. 66, by Alexander Scriabin, was composed between 1912 and 1913. As one of Scriabin's late piano sonatas, the eighth sonata features non-tertian harmony, though is arguably less dissonant than some of his other late works.
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This work is regarded as one of Scriabin's most difficult pieces. It is the longest of Scriabin's sonatas by pages, and many passages are written on three and four staves to a system, as opposed to the typical two staves, to accommodate the complex counterpoint and large intervallic spaces. The character of the eighth sonata is perhaps consciously less extreme than that of the Sixth and Seventh, with fewer aggressive dissonances than the former and climaxes that do not explode with the extreme reckless energy of the latter.
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The Eighth Sonata may be said to contain the widest range of harmonic vocabulary of any of the late sonatas, from the distantly extra-tonal[opening to the radiant Promethean harmony of bars 46-56, which culminate on a straightforward seventh chord on A. Scriabin spoke of the ‘thematic counterpoints in the introduction of the Eighth Sonata’ as showing ‘complete reconciliation’.
In this style, where harmony and melody are one and the harmonic relations are complex and oblique, we do not feel, as in the music of Bach which Scriabin evoked as a comparison, a strong directionality, but rather a dynamic stasis. This music expresses Scriabin’s concept of all-unity; all the thematic elements of the sonata are completely reconciled in a near-frictionless combination.
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Like his sixth sonata, due to his inability to memorise it, Scriabin never performed this sonata in public. He considered parts of it "the most tragic episode of my creative work", and described its harmony as "drawn from nature, as if it had existed before". Stravinsky described the piece as "incomparable."

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@EggMCMUFFIN-e4l 18 күн бұрын

Sadly the intro is always played extremely fast in these recordings. It’s mark 9/8 and most performers play it like 3/8. The chords are like looking to the darkness and vastness of the unknown, and the chords should linger as such. In fact most of these performers are too fast….

@pablobear4241 3 ай бұрын

It’s odd how the basic form of this sonata can be rendered ineligible by a poor performer. Sofronitskys genius is in how clear everything is communicated, his phrase is super coherent. He makes this sonata as clear to me as Beethoven sonatas, whereas other performers don’t have his architectural sense this can seem like something that is “out there”, but my point is to me it’s more formal than you would think otherwise.