Hi

I'm having a bit of confusion about the various editions of Scriabin available. This came up in a lesson the other week, where I played the Concerto (using my Peters Edition), with my teacher using the Belaieff edition from the academy library.

Turns out that my own copy (Peters, edited by someone called Gunther Phillip) has loads of altered phrasing and even altered notes, when compared to the Belaieff edition. I gather from a couple of teachers that Belaieff is more reliable, more urtext if you like - which would make sense since Belaieff was Scriabin's original publisher.

But the weird thing about Belaieff is that it has none of the inspired/bonkers French expression markings which I've come to know and love about Scriabin (e.g. "vaguement, avec delice"). I really don't think that these markings are spurious, they seem to fit what I know of Scriabin's personality. So what happened to the Belaieff edition? Did someone "purge" it of all this, in some period when the trend was towards austerity, as in "get rid of all Scriabin's crazy stuff" (which means, what makes it Scriabin!), leaving only the notes?

Looks like I'm going to have to cross-compare the whole concerto Peters vs. Belaieff for phrasing and altered notes. But I happen to have lost my Peters Edition Sonatas 1-5, so I was wondering if anyone knows what the best edition is to get - with the French synaesthetic stuff left in (A Schirmer collection I picked up at the library has it all translated into English, which loses something). Another student I know has an out-of-print edition by Koenemann, but that's hard to get hold of.

thanks for any ideas!



Seb

I can't really help regarding editions, I'm afraid, but just wanted to say I love Scriabin's Piano Concerto (the subtlety with which he uses theme and variations in the slow movement is exquisite - generally I hate this form) and I agree that the French expression markings seem entirely in keeping with his eccentric - not to mention egocentric - personality.

I have both the Konemann and Peters editions of the Sonatas. The Konemann claims to be an Urtext, and the Peters does not, but so far as I can tell (without looking carefully at every single note) they are identical, or very close to identical.

The main difference is that the Peters edition has sparse, but useful, fingering whereas the Konemann has none. That is why I bought the Peters edition even though I already had them (and many more of Scriabin's works) in Konemann editions.

Thanks for your replies. Czerny, I'm crazy about this concerto too - must be why I've put my head on the block to learn the thing for an exam in January. (Hoping that years of listening to it and score-reading before I was officially a student will help!). I don't like the variations form much either: but I didn't even know the 2nd movement was in variation form for years, until I bought a score years ago. I was surprised the other week when I heard one of my fellow-students playing the Haydn F Minor variations - again, variations so integrated as a piece that they don't really sound like variations.



That's very useful information - thanks! In particular, that you bought the Peters Sonatas after already having the Konemann, and find them identical. That counts against what some other students say, who swear by the Konemann (but partly because it's cheap, if you can ever find it 2ndhand). I haven't worked on any of the Sonatas for a while, but in the Concerto I've found the (again) sparse fingering in Peters very useful as a clue to at least one possible way of tackling the music.

So I think I'll go for the Peters.

According to Boosey & Hawkes the Belaieff edition of the Concerto isn't available any more because of some intellectual property issue. This is confirmed by a note at SheetMusic1.com:



Funny to think that maybe the Russian government applied the same logic to the "export" of Scriabin's concerto to Belaieff's publishing house in Germany - 100 years ago - as to the extraction of Russian oil and gas more recently by the oligarchs...

On the Sonatas, I found an interesting article on the late ones while researching this edition question; it's on JSTOR which I was delighted to find I have free access to at the RSAMD - so if you like reading around the music hopefully you can get hold of it through Utrecht:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/746881?seq=2

all the best



Seb

I've read the Faubion Bowers biography of Scriabin which was originally published in two volumes... it's now available as one paperback from Dover Press. There is quite a lot about Belaief in the book, but i can't say that i remember anything relating to the French Glossary of Terms being omitted, for any specific reason.. I actually thought he started using the French terms more exclusively for and after his Sixth Sonata, which would also have been sometime after the Concerto. I may be wrong about that. However it's a hefty book, and i'll have a flick through it later to see if there is something about this.

I'd be very interested if you find anything flicking through the book. Maybe I'll see if the academy library has that biography, as I'm fascinated by the man and his music.

You're right that in the Sonatas the French stuff only got going with the 6th Sonata. In the 5th (don't have it in front of me right now) he just stretches Italian to its limit to try to squeeze in what he's trying to get across!

I wonder whether he "retro-fitted" the French terms to the Concerto at or after the time of the 6th Sonata, when having another look at it, and whether that's why the Belaieff edition doesn't have these terms?

I've read that too. He's bonkers!

In the best possible way!

I've got hold of the Bowers biography (thanks for the tip Czerny!). Some strange language, I think it's a translation, but packed full of information.

I'm mightily pleased to find a quote from the man himself, confirming what I've always thought about his late music (if only I can find time to learn the 5th Sonata and put this across). Scriabin used to go out on enormous all-night drinking binges with Safonoff, his piano teacher from the Moscow Conservatoire. They'd get locked into the bar by the staff when they went home, and let out by the next day's shift in the morning.
(Maybe I'll suggest this to my teacher... only to help me interpret Scriabin of course...)

Later Scriabin said (Bowers p. 164)

What makes me laugh is that - if I remember correctly - he had all these grandiose plans to take over the world (so to speak) with an enormous festival of light, sounds, smells, etc., but ends up dying ignominiously from a boil on his toe that went septic. (I may not have got my facts quite accurate here, but that's the jist of it.)

Of course he was bonkers - but if you read his life story it is very understandable. For example he lost his young and possibly even greater genius son - drowned at age (I think) 9.

But for the marvellous music (at least up to about the mid 30's opus numbers where it starts to become stranger, and heavier, and loses a lot of its sweet lyricism and instant appeal) you can forgive him almost anything.

Just a couple of things to puit right He died from septacaemia which started from a pimple on his lip. I think his son Julian(several of his pieces are included on the Naxos disc of Scriabins preludes)drowned when he was eleven. His eccentricities and deep interest in theosophy have overshadowed his work at times, but in many ways he was a fairly down to earth chap, especially when it came to taking care of his finances. My favourite quote which is in the book, was in response to recieving money which although was not as much as he would have liked to get, was especially welcomed because he'd had virtually nothing when he got it : ''A wart is not a big thing in itself. But it's a considerable addition to the end of ones nose''...