R.S.

Not my initials….but Rachmaninoff and Scriabin!!! wo0t.

So Rachmaninoff had big hands…yeah whatever. That whole G over the C chord thing we did in class….like I already didn’t feel insignificant enough as a pianist. Thanks.

His 24 preludes for piano are split between two opuses. 23, and 32. Interesting….hm. 23/4 is the famous D major prelude, with the insane stretches for the LH. 32/10 is the UBER famous b minor prelude. Everyone plays this. I never have. But I would like too. Rachmaninoff himself has said that it tells of a return. Perhaps of a king, but it is a return. Beautiful sonorities in both and both are intimate pieces. Enjoy them, please.

Scriabin was sorta crazy. While I did not know of his obsession with mosquitoes–and actually, I didn’t want to know, but too late–I did know that he thought of himself a messiah. All of this, because he happened to be born on Dec. 25. Anyways, his music is so unique and colorful. Of course Horowitz plays his Dsharp minor prelude all the time because its big and flashy…or did. Scriabin wrote a whole ton of Mazurkas of all things. It’s crazy! Polish dances by a Russian composer! But, he was obsessed with Chopin, so that’s that. 10 sonatas, many hard etudes, preludes and other works survive him. Interesting story, he hurt his hand learning the Liszt Don Juan. Sucker. By sonata 5 we get instances of the ‘mystique’ chord coming about. (I don’t think I’ve used the letter Q as many times in the week as I have in this paragraph…wow.)  It’s built off of all sorts of 4ths but I’m not getting into theory any more in my blog thanks to Sean.

~ by rob9092 on February 22, 2009.