Alexander Scriabin - The Poem of Ecstasy {Le Poème de l’extase}

- Composer: Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (6 January 1872 -- 27 April 1915) - Orchestra: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra - Conductor: Vladimir Ashkenazy - Year of recording: 1991 Sculpture: detail of “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa“ (Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini 1647-1652) Le Poème de l’extase {Poem of Ecstasy}, Op. 54, written in 1905-1908. During the decade immediately preceding the First World War, the European musical scene was developing at an astonishing pace. Schoenberg moved from the massive, two-hour-long Gurrelieder, with its epic Romantic text and equally lush score, to the concise and stringent Piano Pieces, Op. 11 in a matter of just eight years, while by 1913 Stravinsky was ready to unveil his Rite of Spring. Although Scriabin stayed apart from these developments, his extraordinary innovations during the first decade of the century are at the very heart of this musical realignment. Although generally regarded as a composer for the piano, Scriabin is the au