Song of the Week #92 – Etude Op. 42 No. 5 by Alexander Scriabin

Year: 1903

Atonal? Occassionally tonal? This piece (and all of Scriabin’s etudes and poèmes) just has this rich quality that most pieces don’t have. Scriabin’s synesthesia just comes out in this piece–if you listen close enough, you can hear him painting this masterpiece, and when the melody appears, the foreground slowly appears with bright crisp colors, emerging above the homogeneous base like a bird flying into the sky from a turbulent ocean.