Skrjabin

Alexander Scriabin
24"x16", oil on canvas paper, 2014

I forgot to mention in the previous post that I also turned fifty during the summer. Not that it has too much to do with anything but it may the reason that I suddenly start playing selections from this substantial collection of classical music of mine. Not only because classical music is more suitable for a fifty year-old than say punk-rock, but also that at that age one starts to recollect memories from the past (and play the same music you played twenty-five years ago.) Sonate No. 3 op. 23 from the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin belongs to that category. It made it into my top 100 twenty-five years ago but remained unplayed since. Until just recently that is. My archive still spelled his name the Dutch way: Skrjabin, which is actually identical to how it is spelled on the German vinyl record I bought a little while back that features the sonata in question. I never had a copy save for an old cassette tape that is long lost. I don't know who played piano on that old tape that I copied from a radio broadcast. The pianist on the German record is Vitalij Margulis from the Soviet Union. He was born in Kharkiv in what is now Ukraine (the north-eastern part of it. Yet another instance in which the top 100 selections parallel the news. Purely coincidental this time.)