Alexander Skrjabin

Complete Piano Sonatas 1

The piano sonatas are considered the true core of Aleksandr Scriabin's oeuvre. No other composer after Beethoven has reshaped this genre so profoundly and thus revitalized its tradition. The desire not simply to continue what already existed, but to surpass it, is already evident in Scriabin's first sonatas, which are exciting works not only from a pianistic point of view, but also in their expressiveness and richness of imagination. Up to the 3rd sonata, Scriabin develops a pronounced sense of constructive coherence and cyclical unity, which also harbors a poetic meaning.

After Volume II (BA 9617), published in 2009, with Sonatas no. 4 and 5, Volume I contains the chronologically preceding works: in addition to the sonatas officially published as No. 1 op. 6, No. 2 ('Sonate-Fantaisie') op. 19 and No. 3 op. 23 during his lifetime, it also includes the early sonatas in G sharp minor (1886) and E flat minor (1887-89). The edition also contains the virtually unknown fragment of a sonata in C sharp minor (1887) as well as the reconstructable parts of a sonata in G sharp minor (1892), which has never been edited before.

In addition to autographs, first editions and new Russian editions from the 1920s, the editor Christoph Flamm also uses the recordings of sonatas 2 and 3, which Scriabin made in 1908 on paper rolls from the Hupfeld company in Leipzig, as sources for the first time.