Save only the lambent "Prometheus," they each reveal to
some degree the influence of Wagner. The "Idyl" of the Second Symphony,
for instance, is dangerously close to the "Waldweben" in "Siegfried,"
although, to be sure, Scriabine's forest is rather more the perfumed and
rose-lit woodland, Wagner's the fresh primeval wilderness. The "Poeme de
l'extase," with its oceanic tides of voluptuously entangled bodies, is a
sort of Tannhaeuser "Bacchanale" modernized, enlarged, and intensely
sharpened. For, in spite of the fact that at moments he handled it with
rare sympathy, the orchestra was not his proper medium. The piano was
his instrument. It is only in composition for that medium that he
expressed indelibly his exquisite, luminously poetic, almost disquieting
temper, and definitely recorded himself.
There have been few composers more finely conscious of the piano. There
have been few who have more fully plumbed its resources, few who have
held it in greater reverence, few who have hearkened more solicitously
to its voice that is so different from the voices of other instruments.
Of all piano music, only that of Debussy and Ravel seems as thoroughly
steeped in the essential color of the medium, seems to lie as completely
in the black and white keys, part of them, not imposed on them.
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