Scriabin was mainly a piano composer. His orchestral output is small—the Piano concerto, three symphonies, the Poem of Ecstasy, Prometheus, and the Reverie, Op 24. This is the earliest of them. The composer started working on it in 1896, the year of Bruckner's death, the same year in which Dvorák wrote his four Erben symphonic poems and Rachmaninov his Moment Musicaux, but if it was only completed in 1899. It is a very short work lasting hardly five minutes. The language is fully romantic. It begins in a short of melancholic haze, but the discourse gathers strength and reaches a climax which conveys a fleeting sense of triumph. However, it quickly subsides and returns to the atmosphere of the beginning. A new attempt to increase the intensity is interrupted and followed by an expression of final sadness. The orchestral writing is homophonic throughout. The strings carry most of the weight of the music.

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