Divided in four movements, this is Scriabin’s last piano piece with classical divisions :

Mv.1 : Dramatico

Mv.2 : Allegreto

Mv.3 : Andante

Mv.4 : Presto con fuoco

Although the form of this sonata is more formal than the previous, its exaltation and dramatic force remain unmatched in Scriabin’s output from this period. In this sonata, he begins a new artistic statement by blurring the three fundamental musical components—rhythm, melody, and harmony—gradually merging them into a single entity. In doing so, he ensures musical coherence through constant leitmotifs spread across the movements, as well as through the return of initial themes.

The ultra-chromaticism points toward Scriabin’s evolving musical language and is reminiscent of Wagner’s harmonic inventions in orchestral writing. The recurring leitmotif may also have been inspired by Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and its famous “fate theme.” Scriabin himself described the sound world of this sonata as “Gothic, like a castle falling to pieces.”

The first movement echoes, just as the first movement on Sonata No.1 Op.6, Schumann’s dramatism and writing styles (ascending and repeated octavas…)

The second, a kind of playful but passionate scherzo, recalls the subtle irony of Ravel and Chabrier, in a more distinctively Russian manner.

The third movement, doloroso, belongs to Scriabin’s meditative repertoire, filled with vaporous colors, as he had already demonstrated in his sonata No.2.

The last movement, written in cyclic form, returns to the precedent themes of the first and third movement, but with shattering energy, full of passion. The piece ends with the same gesture it opened, a stylistic device that Scriabin will use again in later pieces (Sonata No.5, featuring the flying motive).

This Sonata is sometimes said to have been inspired by a written program, “States of the Souls”, but despite the apparent correspondence between the text and the movements, it was only written afterward by his wife Tatianna de Schoelezer and was not part of the composition process itself. Scriabin probably intended a grand momentum depicting the suffering human spirit’s ascent toward the cosmos transcendence. However, unlike sonata No.4 in which the soul is liberated in beatitude, the Sonata No.3 ends with a harshly deceptive minor chord following a radiant major climax.

Bortkiewicz’s Sonata in C# Op.60 shares many similarities with Scriabin’s Sonata No.3 —from its chromaticism and rhythmic leitmotifs to the sudden majorization of the main theme in the finale—and was likely inspired by it.