Second Symphonie of Scriabin, divided into five movements:

Mv.1 : Andante Mv.2 : Allegro Mv.3 : Andante Mv.4 : Tempestoso Mv.5 : Marcia

The first movement opens, as often in Scriabin’s orchestral music, in complete quietude and meditation. The second movement is far more grandiloquent and traditionally romantic. The third, surprisingly chromatic, already anticipates the future of Scriabin’s harmonic language, interwoven with bird trills and mystical evocations of nature in direct heritage of the Wagnerian textures. The fourth movement is an agitated scherzo, playful and light, intertwined with brief lyrical moments. The final movement is majestic and majorizes the first minor theme, a common practice in Scriabin’s finales. The piece ends in the blinding light of C major, just like his later Symphony No. 3, Op. 43, and much like Strauss does in his symphonic poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (1896), all inspired by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

The piece was violently criticized by the press, called dissonant and disgraceful. Scriabin himself later back-pedaled and qualified the last movement as “empty, only to please the public ears”, probably his last confession of adapting his artistic vision to the public opinion. Despite the negative feedback, his former professor Vasily Safonov, who conducted the premiere of the work, concluded it by saying “This, Ladies and Gentleman, is the new Bible!”.