15 Jan 2021

SCRIABIN: Piano Sonata No 4 in F sharp

From Music Alive, 8:08 pm on 15 January 2021

This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions.

Pianist Tony Yan Tong Chen

Pianist Tony Yan Tong Chen Photo: Supplied

Tony Chen is Auckland-born and his teachers here include Jian Liu, Bryan Sayer and Rae de Lisle.

Currently (2020) he’s a student at the Eastman School of Music in New York. He’s supported by Professor Jack Richards and has performed at festivals in Canada, Switzerland and Spain.

Written in 1904 when he was 32, the Fourth Sonata is one of the first works in which Scriabin started to really extend his use of chromaticism and ambiguous harmony.

With Scriabin, it’s all about mysticism, eroticism and the influence of colour – he was a synaesthete: sounds sparked the vision of colours in his mind.

Recorded in the Lewis Eady Showroom, Auckland, 3 October 2020
Engineer/Producer: Tim Dodd

Get the RNZ app

for easy access to all your favourite programmes