The young American pianist Andrew Tyson has devised a new program to showcase his talents: two sonatas and a waltz by Scriabin coupled with Ravel’s...

The young American pianist Andrew Tyson has devised a new program to showcase his talents: two sonatas and a waltz by Scriabin coupled with Ravel’s Miroirs.

Andrew Tyson has chosen to associate two composers whose language seems to divide them, but who nevertheless have many things in common, notably their use of tonality, of certain unusual harmonies and of dissonance. Alexander Scriabin and Maurice Ravel also lived in the same city, at the same period, without ever meeting: Debussy, Ravel and the French musical elite of the period regarded their Russian colleagues as crude and uneducated. Yet when one listens to their music, even if their approach to the piano and to composition could hardly be more different, it is apparent that they use tone colors in the same way.