Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor, op. 20

Scriabin wrote his only concerto in 1896, at twenty-four, and by his own account completed the piano part in a few days; the orchestration took longer and he never enjoyed doing it. He played the solo part at the premiere in Odessa in October 1897, with Vasily Safonov, his former teacher, conducting. The work is in F sharp minor, in three movements, with a central set of variations on a theme of hymn-like simplicity. It stands at the end of his Chopin-influenced period, before the harmonic language of the later sonatas emerged.