24 Preludes, Op. 11 (Scriabin)

Belaieff that by April 1896 he could compose a cycle of forty-eight preludes twice traversing the major and minor keys.

Although he had already completed forty-six of the pieces he distanced himself from this project and divided the preludes over several volumes and opus numbers (op.

Only opus 11, with its strict adherence to the circle of fifths to encompass each major and minor key, bears a resemblance to his original idea.

Quite apart from the spiritual kinship with Chopin's art apparent in Scriabin's early music, both cycles are similar in construction, with the pieces arranged in relative major and minor keys following the circle of fifths.

However, Scriabin himself never mentioned a conscious attempt to imitate Chopin's set of preludes, and by this time he had put aside his early enthusiasm for the Polish composer's music.

It is considered an outstanding set among Scriabin's early works, with easy-to-difficult numbers, among them No.

[4] The whole melody of this prelude consists of 240 eighth-notes,[4] being the opening chord of this piece C–D–E–F–G–A, with the C-major tonic in the bass.

[1]: 8  Intended originally as a ballade,[5] the piece was reworked to its present form and entitled Prelude.

[6] Tenths arpeggiated in bars 20–23 lead to the top note of the chord to fall on the beat.

9, is 36 bars long and takes almost a minute and a half to perform, being played at an Andantino pace.

One of the critically acclaimed performances of this piece is that of Mikhail Pletnev on his disc Scriabin: 24 Preludes/Sonatas 4 & 10.

The first section is, as mentioned, very mysterious, as Scriabin employs many tritones and seventh intervals which do not fall into the key of C♯ minor.

Here, marked fortississimo, the initial melody comes out in full force using the broad tessitura scope of the piano.