ToneBase Scriabin Stage
I made a Scriabin video and thought, hey, why not make a place for us to share any of our Scriabin performances/works in progress? I wonder how many Scriabin fans we have here at ToneBase! (I know, this is a much smaller niche than the great ToneBase Bach Stage, haha.)
I especially love Scriabin’s earlier works, which have a lot of Chopin influence but which have a special magic to them, with frequently gorgeous melodies (and not just in the soprano), exotic harmonies, and sometimes deadly serious drama. His later works are also interesting and can be lovely, but they tend to be more disturbed and anxiety-inducing, to my ears at least.
To start, here are four of my favorite early Scriabin preludes. I added a little commentary to the video so you can see what I’m listening to (or thinking) while playing them.
https://youtu.be/m804aa5steE
I look forward to seeing what Scriabin pieces everyone here is playing!
-
Love Scriabin. Wonderful playing.
-
Gorgeous pieces and very beautiful and touching playing! Thank you so much Marc for starting this thread!
-
Juan Carlos Olite and Will Green : thanks!
Juan Carlos—I look forward to hearing you play some Scriabin also! I’m sure you’d do his work justice.
-
Marc M I'll try to do it, Marc! Thank you.
-
-
I think this may be posted somewhere else on Tonebase, but this is the recording from the Russian Music Competition I participated in 3 months ago.
Scriabin Etude in C# minor, opus 2 no. 1.-
Thurmond R Sounds great! Nice handling of the middle voices.
-
Thurmond R Great! Such a classic!
-
Marc M Vidhya Bashyam thank you!
-
-
Marc M Great idea! I have only 1 Scriabin prelude so far. Will record and post soon.
-
this is an AMAZING idea; thank you so much for starting this forum for Scriabin-loving and Scriabin-curious pianists! (And kudos to Juan Carlos Olite who came up with the idea of a virtual tonebase stage dedicated to a single composer!) I don’t have anything ready by Scriabin just now apart from that little etude I posted yesterday in the Practice Plan Challenge, but I hope to record something else very soon.
In the meantime, here is my biggest, hairiest and most audacious bucket list item from his œuvre: Enjoy! (ideally after consuming a mind-altering substance) -
Marc M Amazingly beautiful pieces, and played with gorgeous sound and perfect sensibility. One imagines oneself transported to maybe the 1890s,, in an ornate salon filled with intoxicatingly fragrant flowers, reclining on a dark red velvet chaise longue while listening to this music wafting from an adjacent room.
-
Alexander Weymann Thank you for the kind words! :) Maybe a ToneBase Scriabin challenge will pop up one of these months, and you'll have a good excuse to work on that gnarly White Mass sonata, haha.
I saw the link from the other thread to Dominic's Scriabin Fantasie. Awesome stuff! For the sake of this thread, here's the link: https://youtu.be/RZjtW1s_R0A?si=wOOG1bRshEkYNMPH
The fantasie is one of my favorite pieces ever. I've listened to Lazar Berman's 1950 recording many times...the way he manages the momentum of the piece is unreal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fIRsesUXws
-
-
He wrote this at age 15. Lovely playing. Horowitz did this at his return to Moscow concert. I'm working on this now as well and will post.
-
Beautifully played!
-
Here is my recording of Etude Op. 8, No. 8.
-
Jack vreeland I enjoyed it, thanks for sharing! I love those inner voices.
-
-
Here's an impromptu recording of Scriabin's Op. 13 No. 1. My son filmed it, and then I added whatever commentary came to mind. I'm still polishing it...should probably make the dotted rhythms more snappy at the beginning, and do a bit more clean up on the part where things get more dramatic.
-
Marc M Absolutely gorgeous music and excellent playing, Marc! Congratulations to the camera assistant and your remarks are simply brilliant. One word: Bravo!
By the way, how do you record the sound with two microphones, it sounds very professional!
-
-
Here's Scriabin's Op. 11 No. 5, with kids being quite noisy at the beginning.
I plan to make a better recording of this one soon--constructive criticism is welcome!-
Marc M Totally agree with Gail. What a beautiful piece and above all admirable power of concentration.
-
Gail Starr Juan Carlos Olite Thank you! For the D major prelude, here's a more proper recording, below. It's unlisted because I plan to include it in a "Top 10" kind of video for slower Scriabin works.
Juan Carlos Olite Glad you like the audio! I'm using a Behringer Xenyx 802S Mixer, with a Rode NT5 Matched Pair (with NT45-O omni capsules). The mixer powers the microphones. And, the mixer has a USB port in the back so I can plug it into my iphone to record. I'm keeping the piano lid fully open and mics are near the bend of the lid, 45 degree angle ~15cm apart, peeking in at the soundboard while avoiding the reflected lid sound.
I used to keep the mics right above the strings, but found that I was losing dynamic range, so p sounded a bit like mf, volume-wise, except with different tone. Moving them farther away helped solve that issue.
I probably should've gotten the Rode NT55 microphones instead, so I wouldn't have had to get the omni capsules to replace the stock NT5 cardioid capsules. The cardioid capsules were OK, but they had a slightly odd boxy sound, whereas the omni capsules sound a good deal more natural.
-
Marc M Really beautifully played, Marc! I should play Scriabin, maybe this summer...
Thank you so much for your information. I'm a novice on these matters, I'll learn
-
Marc M OK, now you are REALLY inspiring me to get some recording gear. Perhaps in the Fall?
-
Marc M Beautiful, lovely, sensitive playing, Marc. Great kids, too!
Thurmond has a solo recital in July, so I'm trying to learn about mic set ups as we are hoping to livestream the recital so family and friends near and far (mostly far) can watch it live and we can post it to YouTube after the fact. Since he's performing both piano and voice, the mic set up might be a bit tricky!
-
-
Lovely interpretation and super-human powers of concentration!
