Rachmaninov, Reger, Scriabin
PROGRAMME NOTES
written by AURÉLIE WALSCHAERT
Sergei Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40 (1941)
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Max Reger Four Tone Poems after A. Böcklin, Op. 128 (1913)
Alexander Scriabin Symphony No. 4, Op. 54 "Le Poème de l'extase" (1908)
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19.12.2026 FLAGEY BRUSSELS
How do you shape your musical language as a composer when you have one foot in Romanticism and the other in modernity?
For Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943), finding a new voice proved a difficult balancing act, and even his fourth and final piano concerto did not quite achieve the result he had hoped for. Max Reger (1873-1916), meanwhile, ventured into the visual arts with his Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin, while Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) turned to mysticism and philosophy. These found full expression in his expansive orchestral works, including his ecstatic Fourth Symphony.
‘Like a ghost in a world grown alien’
For almost his entire life, Rachmaninov combined careers as a composer and pianist, continuing the tradition of the composer-virtuoso. His youthful First Piano Concerto set the course for his career, his Second marked a fresh breakthrough after a prolonged creative block, and his Third served as his calling card for his first concert tour of the United States in 1909-1910. In 1913, he began considering a fourth, but it was not until 1926 that he devoted himself to the task.
The upheaval of the October Revolution in 1917 forced Rachmaninov to leave his homeland and build a new life elsewhere. Travelling via Scandinavia, he reached the United States, where he soon established an extensive network as a concert pianist, enabling him to support his family. During this period, he composed only a handful of major works. His performing career occupied most of his time and brought considerable stress. Above all, he missed the culture of his homeland and the idyllic atmosphere and complete tranquillity of his beloved Ivanovka estate, where he had once retreated to compose. ‘For seventeen years, since I lost my country, I have felt unable to compose. When I was on my farm in Russia during the summers I had joy in my work. Certainly I still write music – but it does not mean the same thing to me now,’ he admitted in a 1933 interview with the Daily Telegraph.
In 1926, he finally had the opportunity to take a sabbatical and realise his plans for a fourth piano concerto. In the preceding years, he had attended the premieres of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Piano Concerto in F, both of which had clearly inspired him. His Fourth Piano Concerto received its premiere on 18 March 1927, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. The critics were scathing: admirers of his earlier concertos missed their expansive melodies and coherence, while champions of modernism dismissed the composition as old-fashioned. Rachmaninov returned to the score and revised it extensively, focusing particularly on the length of the final movement and the piano writing. Yet the response remained lukewarm, and Rachmaninov was still dissatisfied. Two years before his death, he revised the work one last time, but genuine appreciation continued to elude it.
1/ Der geigende Eremit, Arnold Böcklin
2/ Im Spiel der Wellen, Arnold Böcklin
3/ Die Toteninsel, Arnold Böcklin
4/ Bacchanal, Arnold Böcklin
An excursion into painting
The paintings of the Swiss Symbolist Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), which inspired Reger’s Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin, were immensely popular around the turn of the twentieth century. Reproductions could be seen throughout Europe. Die Toteninsel was a particular favourite: several composers, including Rachmaninov and Reger, chose to translate their impressions of the painting into music. While Rachmaninov devoted an entire symphonic poem to it, Reger gave his interpretation a central place in a four-movement cycle. He described this sequence of tone poems as an ‘excursion into the realm of programme music’, suggesting that he was merely exploring a side path rather than abandoning absolute music altogether.
In his Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin, Reger sought to capture the soul of the paintings rather than depict them literally. The four movements explore contrasting moods, from quiet longing in Der geigende Eremit and playful tension in Spiel der Wellen to the dark intensity of Die Toteninsel. In the closing Bacchantenfest, the sun breaks through once more and the festivities erupt. Reger composed the work in Meiningen in the summer of 1913 and conducted its premiere himself on 12 October that year, with the Städtisches Orchester in Essen. It would be one of his last major orchestral works: barely three years later, he died.
Poème de l’Extase is the Joy of Liberated Action. The stronger the heartbeat of life and the more hurried its rhythms, the more clearly the Spirit comes to realise that its nature is one with creativity. When the Spirit has reached the supreme height of its activity and freed itself from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has completely exhausted its substance and its liberated active energy, the Time of Ecstasy will dawn.
Mystical art
Scriabin only began composing larger orchestral works later in his career. His five symphonies, written between 1899 and 1910, trace his development from a late-Romantic to a modernist style. He became increasingly fascinated by Symbolist poetry and the philosophical writings of Nietzsche, Kant and Theosophists such as Blavatsky. These helped him make sense of his place in the world. Scriabin saw himself as a messiah who would transform the world through music, regarding his birth on Christmas Day as the ultimate sign of this calling. He expressed this deeply personal, radical vision with increasing intensity in his large-scale orchestral works.
The alternative titles Scriabin gave his orchestral works, favouring the term ‘Poème’, pointed to their extra-musical and philosophical content. For Poème de l’Extase, also known as his Fourth Symphony, he wrote the poem on which the music was based. In a programme note, he explained the work as follows: ‘Poème de l’Extase is the Joy of Liberated Action. The stronger the heartbeat of life and the more hurried its rhythms, the more clearly the Spirit comes to realise that its nature is one with creativity. When the Spirit has reached the supreme height of its activity and freed itself from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has completely exhausted its substance and its liberated active energy, the Time of Ecstasy will dawn.’
Mysticism offered Scriabin more than a philosophical guide: it also inspired him to organise sound in new ways, beyond the boundaries of functional tonality. This led not only to frequent modulations and chromatic writing, but also to the so-called mystic chord: a dissonant collection of six notes from which he drew the chords and melodies of an entire composition. In the symphonic poem Poème de l’Extase, Scriabin used this method to push harmonic tension to its limits. The ultimate release comes only at the very end, when the full orchestra plays the work’s sole consonant chord.
