Customer Reviews

Mazurkas, Poemes, Impromptus and Other Pieces for Piano (Dover Music for Piano)

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This collection of mostly unrelated works by AlexanderNicolyavich Scriaban (1872-1915) is most undoubtedly the crown jewelof Twentieth-Century piano music; yet it is almost totally overlooked historically as well as musically. It represents not his ordered compositions, as do his preludes and etudes, but rather his sporadic, sometimes psychotic thoughts; it is a veritable musical diary of the very bizarre and mystical life of the great Russian enigma. It belongs on the shelf of any serious music student, especially those of Russian music, for in this myriad of masterworks are the very core of the underappreciated and often entirely overlooked Alexander N. Scriabin.

What the above review failed to mention is that the "Muzurkas, Poems, and Impromptues" book contains all of Scriabin's piano music excepting that which is contained in the "Preludes and Etudes" and the "Piano Sonata's" books. All three of these books are published by Dover and are not altered to death buy rotten editors. Comprehensive editions of composer's works are very valuable and often a huge oversight in the unusually chopy realm of sheet music. The book is also made as good as paperbacks get.

Dover publishes complete works of many composers, and they did pianists a huge favor by compiling the works of Scriabin into several volumes of music. Scriabin, a "bridge" composer between the 19th and 20th Century, composed romantic yet modernistic works sometimes reminiscent of Chopin. His later work was far more dense and individualistic. Unfortunately, he died in his 40's, but, like the short-lived Schubert,he left a considerable volume of works for the piano. The other Dover volumes are the Sonatas and the Preludes and Etudes. Logically, they put other minor works (nocturnes, dances, etc) into this volume.

If you are a skilled pianist, try the Op. 28 Fantasie. This work, sadly, is rarely recorded but is one of the most incredibly gorgeous things ever written for piano. The only other copy of this I own is in a Hungarian edition not available in the US, so rejoice if you play piano.

Dover prints music that is easy to read and the editing is usually blameless. This book is no exception. Highly recommended for serious piano students.

To make it short, the music this book contains is amazing.
But there are some mistakes in it...maybe I found THE piece which contains almost a mistake on each page, but it is still annoying.
The pages are too thin and so not really enjoyable to turn. I am used to good thick paper and never realized that it could make a point. Now I know.