Path to Eternity – A Smashing Success!
A Special Production with two pianos, voice, live-media and dance.
Performers – Jane Hayes, piano, Anna Levy, piano, Christopher Gaze (prerecorded voice)
This production is an attempt to reconstruct a 100-year old dream of one of the greatest musical figures of the early twentieth century, Alexander Scriabin. The work in question is his Mysterium, or more specifically, its Prefatory Act. While Scriabin disciple Alexander Nemtin labored for years to reconstruct the music based on the few surviving sketches that were left after the composer’s death, and a few years ago, Vladimir Ashkenazy recorded a 3-CD set of the music, Yarilo Contemporary Music Society is actually aiming at the heart of the artistic idea of this piece: the idea that music could “purify” and change the world, transforming the human race into noble beings. “The cathedral” of our new spiritual life will be built to transformthe whole world.
The most authentic part of Scriabin’s Mysterium that has remained is the collection of text – remarkable poetry penned by the composer himself; Christopher Gaze will present it in our production. A multi-media demonstration has been constructed around this text, which, for the most part has been inspired by the great Russian Symbolist painter and Scriabin contemporary, Nikolai Roerich.
The concert will open with Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 9 (“Black Mass”), and continue with a two-piano version of his tone poem Prometheus – Poem of Fire, replete with a colored-light display according to the composer’s instructions. Our reconstruction of the Prefatory Act will be featured in the second half our program in which only the composer’s original scores will be used.
