Scriabin, the first multimedia artist.

Scriabin's Third Symphony is likely the composition that marks the end of his youth and his entry into artistic maturity.

It was composed between 1902 and 1904 and premiered in Paris in 1905.

In the years immediately preceding this symphony's composition, Scriabin transitioned from the influence of Chopin, his role model in his youth, to that of Wagner and Liszt. However, Scriabin (primarily a pianist) also enhanced his knowledge of orchestration through lessons from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Finally, Scriabin had been constantly interested in philosophy, starting with the Greek classics (Plato), through Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Feuerbach, and ending with contemporary philosophers (Nietzsche).

His works therefore begin to have a creative motivation of a philosophical nature, since each composition becomes an element of man's path to transcendence and reunion with a higher being. The subtitle of this third symphony, "Divine Poem", is the description of the path that unfolds in the three movements: the first, "Luttes" ("Fights"), describes the struggle between the man who's slave of a personal God, supreme ruler of the world, and the powerful, free man: the man-god. The latter seems to triumph, but only intelligence can affirm a divine ego since the weak individual will is tempted to sink into pantheism. In "Voluptés" ("Pleasures"), the man lets himself be carried away by the pleasures of the sensual world. Pleasures flatter him and he sinks into them, for his personality is annihilated in nature. At this moment, however, the feeling of the sublime rises from the depths of his being, helping him to overcome the passivity of the human ego.” The journey ends in the “Jeu Divin” (“Divine Play”), where “the spirit, finally freed from all the bonds that bound it to the past of submission to a higher power, became the creator of the universe with the sole force of its will, in the awareness of being one with it.” In this universe, he surrenders himself to the sublime joy of free existence: the Divine Play (Jeu Divin).

Even if the performance of this symphony in piano form seems to deny Scriabin’s orchestral research, one must remember that Scriabin was one of the greatest pianists of his generation and one of the main developers of the piano language. Some details in the piano score take us back to elements closely linked to the special bond between Scriabin and his instrument.

This new project (realized with a light setup) leads us to another of Scriabin's passions: music that goes beyond simple listening and - as we would say today - encompasses multimedia. In fact, in 1910, Scriabin designed and built a "clavier a lumières" (keyboard instrument for lights), an instrument producing lights that can be played following a score, where each color/note represents a different concept. It makes every musician's dream come true: to represent each emotion generated in the piece.

The light installation that will be created in this concert, although we do not have explicit references from Scriabin for this symphony, will help us to understand the complexity of the language of Scriabin, who can be likely considered the first multimedia artist in history, according to the modern definition of this term.

An audiovisual work by Philip Henkel will also be premiered in the same concert, this piece explores the relationship between sound and color according to Scriabin's theory.

The Japanese pianist Nao Yamamoto, one of the protagonists of the concert, obtained a PhD on Scriabin's opus; she's coming to Berlin for this concert and to study some documents preserved in the Berlin National Library.

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