Symphony No. 1 in E Major

Written by a headstrong and highly talented composer in his late 20s, Scriabin’s First Symphony (1899-1900) is a hugely ambitious six-movement work in praise of life-restoring art (with words by Scriabin himself). For the Russian composer/pianist, the symphony expressed his triumph over despair after an injury to his right hand wrecked his ambition to be a virtuoso pianist. It is, in effect, a conventional four-movement symphony framed by a blissful, slow introduction (recalling the dawn music in Wagner’s Gotterdämmerung) and a grand choral finale. The second movement, “Allegro drammatico”, is in sonata form, as is typical of a symphony’s first movement. The consolation of the clarinet-led movement is succeeded by a scherzo-style “Vivace”, its tender and almost adolescent playfulness at times recalling Liszt, or even Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel. The nobly anguished “Allegro” that follows could have been an effective last movement—as it in fact became when the actual finale was omitted at the Symphony’s premiere in Moscow on 24 November 1900—but, as Scriabin intended, it is counterbalanced by the choral finale with a grand, Bach-style fugue as apotheosis.