Scriabin Festival | Programme

Festival Programme

Festival Programme (2026-01-03 to 2026-01-05 NZ Time 8am - 3pm)

🎹 International Scriabin 2025 Festival Programme Schedule

Important: All Times/Dates are in New Zealand time, please convert to your own time zone, thank you! We are about 12 or 13 hours ahead of Europe and 18 hours ahead of Eastern Time. We will start each day and session on time and run by the schedule. Programme order subject to change. Make sure to refresh this page and check often. If you have missed any presentation, all the links will be published after the festival concludes and stay public until 2026-01-31. Each day the festival programme starts at 8am and finishes at 3pm NZ time, with a break every two hours (e.g. 2 half-hour breaks each day), Zoe Grant will read 20 haiku each day at break 1.

Pre-Festival Online Gathering: 2025-12-30 at 8am-11am (NZ Time) on Zoom. Email scriabin2025(at)gmail(dot)com to RSVP and for the link!

During 1st break time on each of the three days, an episode of Sherry's Finding Scriabin Interview Series will be played back. They are available on Sherry's YouTube Channel.

DAY 1 (Saturday 2026-01-03) NZ Time

8:00am Greetings from Scriabin 2025 festival Artistic Director and planning committee/advisors - Sherry Grant (NZ/Taiwan), Simon Nicholls (UK), Dmitry Rachmanov (USA/Russia), Veljko Glodić (Croatia) & Martin Kaptein (Germany/Netherlands) (15 min)

8:15am Living the Classical Life Episode 2: Joe Patrych Interview - Zsolt Bognár (USA) (15 min)

8:30am A Practical Look at Scriabin’s Philosophy - Martin Kaptein (Germany/Netherlands) (30 min)

9:00am Scriabin: Towards the Flame - Marina Frolova-Walker (UK) & Peter Donohoe CBE (UK) (1 hour)

Day 1 Break 1 (10:00am-10:30am) (30 min) (Zoe reading 20 Music Haiku, Part 1) (Finding Scriabin Interview Episode A - Matthew Bengtson)

10:30am La Visione Introspectiva dell' Op 54 di Scriabin - Antonella Barbarossa (Italy) (30 min)

11:00am Scriabin Recital - Daniela Roma (USA/Italy) (15 min)

11:15 Scriabin and French Impressionists - Yinzhi Yuan (UK/China) (45 min)

12pm Performance by Arsen Dalibaltayan (Croatia), 4.12.2025 (30 min)

Day 1 Break 2 (12:30pm-1:00pm) (30 min)

1:00pm The Piano Files: Historical Scriabin Recordings - Mark Ainley (Canada) (30 min)

1:30pm Interpreting Late Scriabin Through Multimodal Perception in Crossdisciplinary Performance - Elina Akselrud (USA/Ukraine) (30 min)

2:00pm Theosophy, Philosophy and Scriabin’s Harmonic Language (TBC) - Jeffrey Yunek (USA) (30 min)

2:30pm How to Sound Like Scriabin - Nahre Sol (USA/South Korea) (30 min)

(END OF DAY 1 @ 3pm)

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Day 2 (Sunday 2026-01-04) NZ TIME

8:00am Presentation of the Croatian Society "Alexander Scriabin" - Veljko recital, Bozo tribute to AS Scriabin & Julia recital (30 min)

8:30am Scriabin: Philosophical Music - David Proud (UK) (30 min)

9:00am (LIVE) Panel Discussion: 1 hour (panel members TBC) (1 hour)

Day 2 Break 1 (10:00am-10:30am) (30 min)

10:30am The Influence of Anglophone Music History Narratives on the Analysis of Scriabin’s Compositional Style - Ivor Prajdić (Croatia) (30 min)

11am Musicology presentation - Alessandro Bistarelli (Italy) (30 min)

11:30am Two Aesthetic Poles in Early Russian Modernism: Rachmaninoff and Scriabin through the Lens of the C♯-minor Prelude - Stacy Jarvis (UK) (30 min)

12pm James Kreilling (CD Trailer + Scriabin Recitals) (30 min)

Day 2 Break 2 (12:30pm-1:00pm) (30 min)

1:00pm Haiku Journey (Episode 5) Interview with Michael Smeer (Founder of MHP), Announcement of Results of the MHP (My Haiku Pond) 10th Anniversary Haikai Contest and Haiku Reading - Zoe Grant (NZ) (15 min)

1:15pm Scriabin in Transcription, Building a Global Piano Family through Scriabin Societies & Kaleidoscopic World of Scriabin - Sherry Grant (NZ/Taiwan), in collaboration with Yana Gall-Huang (Taiwan/Russia) (20 min)

1:35pm Exploring Scriabin's Mystic Chord and Prometheus: Poem of Fire - Rick Fergusson (USA) (20 min)

1:55pm Short Scriabin Recital - 伍盛中 (Sheng-chung Wu)(Hong Kong) (10 min)

2:05pm Exploring Scriabin’s Piano Concerto - 顏華容 (Artemis Yen)(Taiwan) (30 min)

2:35pm Recital on the Horowitz Piano - Sandro Russo (USA/Italy) (25 min)

(END OF DAY 2 @ 3pm)

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Day 3 (Monday 2025-01-05) NZ Time

8:00am Dmitry Rachmanov: Interview with Joe and Scriabin Recital (45 mins)

8:45am More Interview of Joe Patrych, on Horowitz's piano, Piano Roll, and Neighbors in NYC, Ep. 1 - by aTonalHits (Katha Zinn and Illya Filshtinskiy) (15 min)

9:00am Lesser Known Scriabin - Piano Miniatures that Deserve More Attention - Alexey Chernov (Germany/Russia) (30 min)

9:30am Portrait of Scriabin - Sabrina Zelić (Croatia) (30 min)

Day 3 Break 1 (10:00am-10:30am) (30 min)

10:30am Lecture Recital - Bruno Vhalek (Spain/Croatia) (1 hour)

11:30am Scriabin, Wilhelm Wundt, and Early Experimental Psychology (from Scriabin Symposium, Scriabin Society of America, Klavierhaus NYC, May 31, 2025) - Lindsey Machiarella (USA)(45 min)

12:15pm My Scriabin Journey, a Mini Recital - Sheng-chung Wu (伍盛中)(Hong Kong) (15 mins)

Day 3 Break 2 (12:30pm-1:00pm) (30 min)

1:00pm-3:00pm One Fire (Official Trailer + Full Documentary (1 hour 45 min)

(END OF DAY 3 @ 3pm)

(Networking Festival After-Party: 3:00pm-3:30pm on Day 3) (30 min)

3:30pm FAREWELL TILL NEXT FESTIVAL!

Abstracts

Historical Scriabin Recordings by Mark Ainley (Canada)

In this presentation, historical recordings expert Mark Ainley of The Piano Files will present some outstanding performances of Scriabin’s piano music from the 1920s. Featuring not just Russian pianists but an array of exceptional international interpreters - some still legendary, others forgotten over the course of the last century - this presentation will include some world premiere recordings of early and late Scriabin piano works.

The Introspective Vision of Scriabin’s Op. 54 by Antonella Barbarossa (Italy)

“I have just written a monologue with the most divine colors,” writes Scriabin. My presentation explores this inner vision in the Poem of Ecstasy, highlighting the work’s continuous rise in energy, its visionary orchestral writing, and the psychological landscape it creates. Drawing from my own conducting experience with the Polis Sinfonica (100 players), I will analyze how gesture, color, and broad sonic arches shape the ecstatic trajectory of the piece. I will show brief video excerpts from that performance and, at the piano, illustrate some harmonic ideas that reveal the introspective core and the transformative spiritual impulse of Op. 54.

Scriabin in Transcription & Kaleidoscopic World of Scriabin by Sherry Grant (NZ/Taiwan) in collaboration with Yana Gall-Huang (Taiwan/Russia)

Scriabin: Musical Philosophy by David Proud (UK)

This presentation examines the influence of Hegel’s speculative philosophy upon the music of Scriabin, showing how Hegelian speculative philosophy is musical philosophy and Scriabin’s music is Hegelian philosophical music. In accordance with Hegelian philosophy, the true is the whole, and the primary focus here is upon the Hegelian notion of a floating centre that destroys the standard subject/predicate propositional form to be replaced with subject/subject, essences playing off of each other, the tensions thereby forming ongoing harmonies in order to grasp the moving whole, and upon losing its firm objective ground thinking experiences true freedom that Scriabin’s compositions ecstatically express.

Scriabin, Wilhelm Wundt, and Early Experimental Psychology by Lindsey Macchiarella (USA)

Aleksandr Scriabin is well-known for his grandiose his plans to “evolve” humanity though mass exposure to multi-sensory art, ideas he manifested in his light-symphony, Prometheus, and sketched in his incomplete, ritualistic drama, Prefatory Action. Scholarly discourse on Skryabin’s philosophies typically points to the influence of theosophy, usually in reference to memoirs by his early biographers, Sabaneyev and Schloezer. Scriabin’s theories, as outlined in his 1904-06 private journals, however, contain no direct theosophical references. They begin, instead, with a quote from Wilhelm Wundt, the “Father of Experimental Psychology.” While theosophy, philosophy, and evolutionary theory certainly play a role in shaping Scriabin’s worldview and goals, this paper argues that the budding field of experimental psychology was most influential of all. Wundt’s quote sets the tone and topic for Scriabin’s subsequent “self-observations.” His explicit goal in the journals was to observe his own mind – his thoughts, feelings, sensations – and to draw conclusions about the nature of consciousness and his experience of reality. Scriabin’s fascination with the field of psychology takes on new meaning when situated in the context of its disruptive emergence in the mid-19th century, and its complex relationship to the field of philosophy at the turn of the 20^th. A comparative analysis between Scriabin and Wundt’s writings illuminates an intricate web of influence, and demonstrates the extent to which Scriabin departed from, and elaborated upon Wundt’s ideas in the development of his own theories on consciousness and multi-modal productions.

Two Aesthetic Poles in Early Russian Modernism: Rachmaninoff and Scriabin through the Lens of the C♯-minor Prelude by Stacy Jarvis (UK)

Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin are frequently positioned side by side in accounts of Russian music at the turn of the twentieth century, yet just as often portrayed as embodying opposing aesthetic trajectories. This paper revisits that perceived polarity through a close comparative analysis of two early piano miniatures: Rachmaninoff’sPrelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2 (1892), and Scriabin’s Prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 11 No. 10 (1894). Composed within a narrow chronological window and sharing genre, key, and dramatic premise, these works provide a particularly fertile ground for examining how divergent artistic worldviews emerged from a shared cultural and institutional milieu.

Rather than pursuing questions of direct influence, the paper treats the two preludes as parallel responses to similar expressive problems inherited from late Romanticism. Through detailed analysis of dramaturgy, form, harmonic language, texture, and pianistic conception, it argues that these miniatures already encapsulate the composers’ fundamentally different approaches to time, tragedy, and metaphysical meaning. Rachmaninoff’s prelude articulates a vision grounded in narrative continuity, proportional form, and collective symbolism, while Scriabin’s compresses musical time through rupture, harmonic astringency, and heightened volatility.

By situating these early works within broader aesthetic and philosophical contexts, the paper challenges simplistic narratives of conservatism versus innovation. Instead, it reveals two distinct but equally modern responses to the same cultural moment, illuminating the early crystallisation of Russian modernism and the enduring legacy of Romantic thought at the threshold of the twentieth century.

The Influence of Anglophone Music History Narratives on the Analysis of Scriabin's Compositional Style by Ivor Prajdić (Croatia)

Anglophone music history narratives are a valuable source of foundational information about composers’ styles for students, researchers, and performers alike. They also hold a special place in music historiography due to their global reach, as English has become the lingua franca of science and education. Nevertheless, these narratives have their own shortcomings and problematic aspects. The main research questions of my presentation are: How is Scriabin portrayed as a figure in anglophone music history narratives, and how do these narratives inform and influence the study of his compositional style?

Theosophy, Philosophy and Scriabin's Harmonic Language by Jeffrey Yunek (USA)

This presentation examines Scriabin’s philosophical influences and correlates these influences his new harmonic system. First, I cover Blavatsky’s color-scale associations and show how Scriabin modified it to be a system of color-key associations. Then I show how Schopenhauer associates modulations of closely related keys to the death of the individual and the preservation of universal Will. Finally, I will demonstrate how tonality is progressively infiltrated, delayed, and ultimately denied by prioritizing key-based relationships (i.e., closely related modulations) over the individualistic tendency tones of chord-based harmony through analyses of three of his middle-period works.

How to Sound Like Scriabin by Nahre Sol (USA/South Korea)

Nahre analyzes the life and musical style of Alexander Scriabin, and reconstructs her notes to create an arrangement of "Happy Birthday" in the style of the composer.

A Practical Look at Scriabin’s Philosophy by Martin Kaptein (Germany/Netherlands)

Alexander Scriabin is often remembered as a radical musical innovator, yet his philosophical thought is frequently misunderstood, reduced to mysticism, eroticism, or eccentricity. This essay argues that Scriabin developed a coherent and serious philosophy centered on creativity as an endless process of becoming, in which struggle, resistance, and transformation are not obstacles to be overcome once, but essential forces of spiritual development.

Drawing primarily on contemporary accounts by Leonid Sabaneev and later interpretations by Andrej Bandura and Boris Schloezer, the essay outlines Scriabin’s conception of creativity as divine play, his redefinition of ecstasy as a cosmic rather than physiological phenomenon, and his conviction that music functions not as representation but as real, transformative action. Particular attention is given to key works such as The Divine Poem, The Poem of Ecstasy, and Prometheus, in which Scriabin’s philosophical ideas are realized musically.

The essay situates Scriabin’s thought within a broader intellectual landscape, highlighting affinities with Orphic traditions, German Idealism, Eastern Orthodox mysticism, and Taoist conceptions of unity and transformation, while also clarifying fundamental differences from figures such as Nietzsche and Wagner. Ultimately, Scriabin emerges not as an isolated mystic, but as a composer-philosopher who sought to articulate a global, affirmative vision of humanity - one in which all suffering is transformed through creative striving, and the life of the spirit unfolds as an ever-renewing process.

The Introspective Vision of Scriabin’s Op. 54 by Antonella Barbarossa (Italy)

Scriabin and French Impressionists by Yinzhi Yuan (UK/China)

Interpreting Late Scriabin Through Multimodal Perception in Crossdisciplinary Performance by Elina Akselrud (USA/Ukraine)

This presentation explores how multi-sensory, crossdisciplinary collaboration can illuminate the expressive potential of Alexander Scriabin’s piano œuvre — from his evocative character miniatures to his monumental late Sonatas. Drawing on two recent practice-led productions, “Vers le Mystère” (2022) and “The Scriabin Sonatas Reimagined, Part 2” (2023–2024), I demonstrate how integrating dance, light design, installations, and scent reveals latent layers of musical meaning, resulting in enriched performance, nuanced interpretational decisions, and deeper artistic insight. My five-year-long research resulted in a deepened understanding of possibilities in pianistic interpretation, with flexible nuanced phrasing, balance, articulation, pedaling, and temporal phenomena, as well as an immersive experience that transcends the traditional recital format, allowing performers and audiences alike to cross over the discipline boundaries by engaging multiple senses simultaneously. By connecting concepts of embodiment, interpersonal gestural communication, crossmodal perception, autoethnography, stimulated recall, and elements of interpretative phenomenological analysis with the tangible demands of concert performance, I aim to show how artistic research can enhance a dialogue between several disciplines and add to the knowledge, ultimately enriching the creative exchange on stage.

Piano Recital by Sabrina Zelić (Croatia)

Scriabin:
Two Poems op 32
Preludes op. 11 no 1; 9; 24
The Ninth Sonata op.68

Vjekoslav Nježić: Hommage S

My Scriabin Journey, a Mini Recital by Sheng-chung Wu (伍盛中) (Hong Kong)

This mini recital is a panorama, offering the audience a glimpse of the evolution of creative styles of Alexander Scriabin throughout the composer's life. The programme features 3 Études by the composer: the most famous early quasi "Revolution" no.12 from op.8, Alexander Nikolayevich's favourite op.42 no.5, and finally, the late etude of transcendence in 9ths, no.1 from op.65. These etudes are so inspiring during my own artistic development and mean so much to me, I am delighted to share them with you all.

ONE FIRE - Synopsis by Terhi Ahava (Finland)

In 1875, in a dimly lit room in New York City, two seekers—Helena Blavatsky, a fearless mystic, and Henry Steel Olcott, a visionary reformer—lit a spark that would ignite minds across the world. They called it Theosophy, an ancient wisdom reborn, a path beyond dogma, beyond borders, beyond illusion. Theosophy shaped the imaginations of Alexander Scriabin, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Jean Delville, and other pioneers who transformed modern art and music. It stirred the social conscience of Mahatma Gandhi, informed the educational vision of Maria Montessori, and left its imprint on movements in science, philosophy, and global culture. What began as a whisper of unity became a catalyst for some of the most daring creative and humanitarian experiments of the modern era. Now, 150 years later, the Theosophical Society has produced a new documentary, ONE FIRE, directed by Terhi Ahava, to honor this milestone and revisit Blavatsky’s legacy with cinematic reverence and philosophical depth. More information: www.onefirethefilm.com