When Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin's music was performed during his lifetime, it always elicited ecstatic responses from the listeners. Wilhelm Gericke, conductor of the Vienna opera, rushed backstage after one of Scriabin's concerts and fell on his knees crying, 'It's genius, it's genius...'. After the composer's death in 1915, however, his music steadily lost the captivating appeal it once held. The main reason for this drastic change in the listeners' attitude is an enormous gap existing between the printed scores of Scriabin's music and the way the composer himself played his works....
When Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin's music was performed during his lifetime, it always elicited ecstatic responses from the listeners. Wilhelm Geri...
Chopin's twenty-four PrA(c)ludes remain as mysterious today as when they were newly published. What prompted Franz Liszt and others to consider Chopin's PrA(c)ludes to be compositions in their own right rather than introductions to other works? What did set Chopin's PrA(c)ludes so drastically apart from their forerunners? What exactly was 'the morbid, the feverish, the repellent' that Schumann heard in Opus 28, in that 'wild motley' of 'strange sketches' and 'ruins'? Why did Liszt and another, anonymous, reviewer publicly suggest that Lamartine's poem Les PrA(c)ludes served as an inspiration...
Chopin's twenty-four PrA(c)ludes remain as mysterious today as when they were newly published. What prompted Franz Liszt and others to consider Chopin...
