Alexander Scriabin began composing his Third Piano Sonata in 1897, immediately upon completing his Second. Like that work, the Third shows only vague signs of the remarkable atonal revolution that Scriabin will, quite independently of Schoenberg or any other composer, carry out in his music during the years just prior to World War I. The Sonata No. 3 in F sharp minor, Op. 23 was completed in just a few months (as opposed to the nearly five years it took to finish the Second Sonata). Throughout this 20-minute piece, Scriabin continues to assert his own individuality over the Chopin-Liszt tradition which heavily influenced his earliest works. Although even his earliest compositions contain an ecstatic rapture entirely his own, the Third Sonata is perhaps the first truly Scriabin-esque musical statement, wholly deserving of its special little niche in the repertories of the world's pianists. Scriabin gave the Sonata several titles at various times, including "Gothic" and, from a much later period, "États d'âme (States of the Soul)," the latter an effort on the composer's part to reconcile the work with his growing interest in mystical and theosophical traditions. Happily, the programmatic outlines Scriabin indicated—from the suffering of the first movement through the respite of the second and deep feeling of the third to the final plunge into nothingness in the finale—are sufficiently vague to allow the piece to be heard as a purely musical statement. After the declamatory opening gestures of the Drammatico movement, Scriabin moves us into a sound-world richly adorned with his own unique brand of evanescent figurations and sweeping, ravishing melody. The opening statements also serve to close the movement, suitably transformed into fragments of a more tender variety. The following Allegretto is in the manner of an intermezzo—here a bass line in octaves moves around in E flat major before a central section which radiates with the gentlest simplicity. The third and fourth movements (Andante and Presto con fuoco) are fused together by a brief connecting passage that recalls the opening movement. Scriabin sings one of the most purely gorgeous melodies he had yet written (or, indeed, would ever write) in the Andante, while the Presto sets fiery chromatic gestures against nostalgic lyric passages. A triumphant restatement of the Andante's melody is made, but Scriabin pulls the rug out from under our feet and throws us back into the tumult of F sharp minor for the finish.

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