Piano music by this evening’s 3 composers makes extraordinary intellectual and technical demands on the performer.  It is possible to compose technically demanding music purely for show, but when one’s musical style demands high quality technical virtuosity, the challenges on the performer are of a different magnitude.  Scriabin’s Fantasie, written in 1900, is a single movement Sonata.  It contains some of the composer’s most difficult writing.  Quoting from Wikipedia, “The dense contrapuntal textures are extremely difficult to voice, the collisions between the hands require careful working out, and the left-hand accompaniment is in places more or less impossible, requiring redistribution”.

The Scriabin’s friend and colleague Leonid Sabaneyev, never noted for an accurate memory, tells the story (possibly apocryphal) of playing part of the Fantasie in the composer’s apartment.  Scriabin called out from another room, “Who wrote that? It sounds familiar.”  “Your Fantasie”, was the reply.  “What Fantasie?”

Chopin’s 2 sets of Études were written at different periods.  There are 24 in all with a further 3 published without opus number.  Opus 10, dedicated to Liszt, were composed between 1829 and 1832.  Opus 25 between 1832 and 1835.  Neither group was composed as a cycle.  Each study highlights a particular technical problem creating a pianistic solution in a musical way.  The Chopin Études opened a new set of challenges for new generations of performers.  Prior to Chopin’s 2 sets, sets of piano exercises had been published by composers such as Clementi and Czerny, finger exercises of increasing difficulty.  Chopin’s “exercises” were of a different calibre, offering studies to improve an already advanced technique and offering musical compositions that became regular features of the concert repertoire.   Some of the études acquired nicknames – e.g. Revolutionary, Winter winds, Black Key and Aeonian Harp.  None were of Chopin’s creation.  

Prokofiev’s 3rd Sonata is a one movement piece, premiered by the composer in a festival of his music, sponsored by the Moscow Conservatory in 1918.  Written in 1917, it has the subtitle “From the Old Notebooks”.  It uses musical material written in his teenage years.  In a letter to his colleague Miaskovsky, he wrote about Sonata no.3, “It will remain …in one movement: pretty, interesting and practical”.   He omits to say that is also very difficult!  
 

Programme Notes Copywrite Alistair Jones, 2026