"Scriabin! Remember that name!" The exhibition is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of A.N. Sсriabin

01/06/2022 - 12:00

150 years ago on Christmas Eve Alexander SCRIABIN came into the world – composer, pianist, philosopher and poet who perceived music, light and color as a single unit. He had a short but very rich and colorful life which is highlighted in our exhibition. 

It opens with a brief story about Scriabin's family. The composer lost his mother at an early age and rarely saw his father yet his childhood was a happy one.

We will also acquaint you with the outstanding musicians and teachers under whom Alexander Scriabin was lucky enough to study: Nikolai Sergeyevich Zverev from whom the young Scriabin took piano lessons, Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev, Antoni Stepanovich Arensky and Vasily Ilyich Safonov under whom he studied at the Conservatory. One cannot tell about the composer without examples of his musical heritage therefore the

exhibition features scores of Scriabin's works from different periods of his life: from the composer's very early piano miniatures to the magnificent "Divine Poem", the radiant "Poem of Ecstasy" and the unfinished "Prefatory Act" to his "Mystery". Creative people are often very scattered and impractical, many of them simply cannot survive without support – and here in our story Mitrofan Petrovich Belyaev appears – a timber merchant and patron of the arts, infinitely passionate about music. Until his death he remained for Scriabin not only a benefactor and publisher but also a very close friend.

It was thanks to Belyaev that the young musician's first foreign tours took place. His concerts in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague, Amsterdam, Cologne, Rome, New York and London were a resounding success. And in Paris one of the reviewers wrote about him: "Scriabin! Remember that name! It will sound for centuries!" Scriabin's private life also attracted the attention of his contemporaries. His first wife was the talented pianist Vera Ivanovna Isakovich. The marriage brought forth four children: Rimma, Elena, Maria and Lev. Unfortunately several years later the family fell apart. The composer's second wife was Tatiana Fedorovna Schlцzer, niece of a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. The marriage was controversially received by Scriabin's entourage – so the composer chose a life abroad – with a new family, vague prospects for the future and grandiose ideas. In Europe Scriabin had to lead a "nomadic life", work on some of today's most prominent works on disturbed rental pianos, take part in Sergei Diaghilev's "Russian Seasons" and meet many famous figures in culture and the arts. Almost five years later, after being invited by the musician and publisher Sergei Koussevitsky, the composer returned to Russia and brought with him the score of "Prometheus", the first musical composition to feature Luce (part of the light). The exhibition tells about the last years of Scriabin's life with score editions and manuscripts of his compositions, concert programs, photographic portraits, drawings and caricatures reflecting the attention of the media to the composer. The exhibition concludes with photographs of his study, which has remained almost unchanged for a hundred years...