The piano sonatas are regarded as the central works of Alexander Skrjabin’s compositional output. No other composer after Beethoven reshaped this genre so radically, thereby reinvigorating the tradition of the sonata. Skrjabin’s desire not simply to continue the existing tradition, but to surpass it, is evident as early as his first sonatas. These are exciting works from the pianist’s perspective and in their abundance of expression and wealth of imagination. Up to the third sonata Skrjabin developed a distinctive feeling for structural coherence and cyclical unity which at the same time revealed poetic qualities.
This volume contains the earlier works; sonatas officially published during the composer’s lifetime as No. 1 op. 6, No. 2 (Sonate-Fantaisie) op. 19 and No. 3 op. 23 as well as the sonatas written during his youth, in G-sharp minor (1886) and E-flat minor (1887-89). The edition also includes the virtually unknown fragment of a sonata in C-sharp minor (1887) and the reconstructed parts of a sonata in G-sharp minor (1892) never previously published.