In the vein of Russian composers, I'd like to recommend Scriabin. (As Jamie recalled correctly, he was the one I mixed up with Schoenberg in my TASP interview--it's because I like Scriabin so much more.) His earlier works have a Chopinesque quality--and his later works are also incredibly interesting. Scriabin was an interesting character, but instead of telling you about it myself, I will quote what I took from the Scriabin Society of America:
"Scriabin's thought processes were immensely complicated, even tinged with solipsism. "I am God," he once wrote in one of his secret philosophical journals. He embraced Helen Blavatsky's Theosophy. In London he visited the room in which Mme. Blavatsky died. Scriabin considered his last music to be fragments of an immense piece to be called Mysterium. This seven-day-long megawork would be performed at the foothills of the Himalayas in India, after which the world would dissolve in bliss. Bells suspended from clouds would summon spectators. Sunrises would be preludes and sunsets codas. Flames would erupt in shafts of light and sheets of fire. Perfumes appropriate to the music would change and pervade the air. At the time of his death, Scriabin left 72 orchestral-size pages of sketches for a preliminary work Prefatory Action, intended to "prepare" the world for the apocalyptic ultimate masterpiece. Alexander Nemtin, the Russian composer, assembled those jottings and co-created the Prefatory Action. Its three vast movements have been performed with great acclaim under conductors Cyril Kondrashin in Moscow and Vladimir Ashkenazy in Berlin with Alexei Lubimov at the piano."

posted by Eunice   [7:37 PM]

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