Skriabin S. Sonata for piano No 9

The genre of piano sonata is one of the most significant sphere in Alexander Skriabin's (1872–1915) creation. Twenty years lay between his First and Tenth Sonatas. It occured to be the age satiated with impetuous fruitful ideas, leading the composer sometimes to new contrasting spiritual aims.

The sonata-symphonic structure attracted Skriabin by its inner diversity and capacity, able to embody discrepant unity. Skriabin was the true composer-pianist. Therefore he interpreted the sonata structure rather random, as if being begotten again and again. Those were his philosophical and symbolic conceptions to have become his guides both in life and art. 

The last five sonatas (No 6–10) are marked by their evident connection with Skriabin's last completed score of “Prometheus” (1910) so as the unrealized plot of the “Mystery”. Here the composer resorts to his own discoveries in the sphere of thematical elaboration and harmony. 

Sonata No 9 op. 68 was created simultaneously with the Eight and Tenth ones during the period of 1912–1913. That period brought ponderable intellectual element into Skriabin's philosophy, which burst out in tragical effusions. This tendency was revealed especially in the Ninth Sonata. 

The author himself called one of its episodes “the theme of ambuscading death”, i. e. the second motive of the principle theme. The Ninth Sonata was firstly performed by yhe authir on February 12, 1915, in Moscow.