Symphony No. 3 in C Minor

A work of impulsive and almost unbridled intensity, Scriabin’s Divine Poem, first performed in Paris in 1905, is the most ambitious and extended of all his compositions. It’s the first of his symphonies to carry an extra-musical programme in which Scriabin explores the evolution and emancipation of the human spirit and its communion with the divine. The Symphony is divided into three substantial movements that are performed without a break. A slow and grandiose Introduction presents the work’s two main thematic ideas, an imposing seven-note motif in the lower brass followed by a defiant trumpet fanfare. This leads directly into the fiercely dramatic first movement entitled “Luttes” (“Struggles”) which according to the composer, embodies the struggle between Man enslaved by a personal God and the free man, God in himself. The latter is victorious, but when it comes to proclaiming his divinity, he finds that his will is too weak for such a feat. Accordingly, he plunges into the delights of the sensual world as represented in the passionate second movement entitled “Voluptés”. Thereafter, a sublime power rises in him so that in the final movement, “Jeu divin”, the liberated spirit gives himself up to the joy of a free existence. Scored for a huge late-Romantic sized orchestra, its musical language is strongly influenced by Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz. At the same time, the distinctively piquant harmonies in Scriabin’s work already point forward to the more radical compositional style of The Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus.