The fifth piano sonata, Op. 53, is a one movement sonata written by Alexander Scriabin in 1907. It is his first sonata to be written in one movement, but from this point forward he retained this format. It marks the end of his Romantic period and the beginning of his transition to an atonal style. Many composers at this time were making a transition to, or at least leaning in the direction of atonalism by writing increasingly dissonant music. Scriabin, characteristically, was taking a different approach. The harmonic language of the sonata is largely consonant and consisting of tertian harmony. It should be mentioned that this harmony is not easily explained by any harmonic theory generally applied to this period, but is quite easy to understand when the large-scale movement is considered from a Classical perspective, and the individual harmonies are considered from a Jazz perspective (that is, the perspective of jazz harmony which would come substantially later). With the exception of the second theme, the piece makes limited use of non-chord tones. Scriabin achieves the near absence of tonality by writing deliberately ambiguous sonorities which at times could exist in more than one key, and at others deliberately confuse the ear by treating dominant seventh chords separated by a tritone as functionally identical.
The piece consists of five themes, which intertwine and evolve throughout the piece: the intense, dissonant trill and glissando in the opening; a slow, languishing introductory theme; a dance-like presto based on material from the languishing theme and serving as the first subject group; a transition marked imperioso; and a meno vivo that serves as the second subject group, also based on material from the second, languishing theme (see sonata form).
Scriabin included an epigraph to this sonata, taken from his long poetic work The Poem of Ecstasy (not to be confused with his Symphony No. 4 "Poem of Ecstasy", Op. 54.) The epigraph reads, "I summon you to life, hidden longings! You, drowned in the dark depths of the creative spirit, you fearful embryos of life, I bring you daring!"
This is Scriabin's most recorded sonata. The legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter described it as the most difficult piece in the entire piano repertory (along with Franz Liszt's Mephisto Waltz no.1).[1] A typical performance lasts about 11–12 minutes.
Notable recordings include those by Alexei Sultanov, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Sofronitsky, Samuil Feinberg, Glenn Gould, Marc-André Hamelin and Igor Zhukov.
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