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 romantic. The third, surprisingly chromatic, already anticipates the future of Scriabin’s harmonic language, interwoven with bird trills and evocations of nature. The fourth movement is an agitated scherzo, playful and light, interspersed 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…” 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…”