No one has caressed
it more lightly, more tenderly, more voluptuously. No one has made of
the piano-trill, for instance, more luminous and quivering a thing. And
because he was so sensitive to his medium, the medium lured from out him
his creative strength.
He grew to his high poetic stature from an elegant and aristocratic
craftsman of the school of Chopin. More than that of any modern master,
his art is rooted in the great romantic tradition as it comes to us
through Chopin, Wagner, Liszt and Strauss; and develops almost logically
out of it. And in the compositions of his first period, the period that
ends, roughly, with the piano concerto, the allegiance is marked, the
discipleship undeniable. The influence of Chopin is ubiquitous.
Scriabine writes mazurkas, preludes, etudes, nocturnes and waltzes in
his master's cool, polite, fastidious general manner. These pieces, too,
might seem to have been written in order to be played in noble salons
lit by massive candelabra, to countesses with bare shoulders. The
twenty-four preludes Opus 11, for instance, are full of Chopinesque
turns, of Chopinesque morbidezza, of Chopinesque melodies. The harmonic
scheme rarely transgresses the limits which Chopin set himself. The
pieces are obviously the work of one who in the course of
concert-playing has come to discover the finesses of the Pole's
workmanship.
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