Nathalie Alessi: musician
Maja Jantar: voice / video / scenography
The waves wash over the signal of the incoming train is a project based on Skrjabin’s preludes Op.11. It has taken shape during our artistic residency at the Centro Studi per le Arti e le Lettere di Bogliasco.
Skrjabin lived in Bogliasco for almost a year in 1905. The place, along with the scenery were for him sources of great inspiration, that period during which he wrote the sonata-fantasia Op.19 .
The Preludes he wrote during one of his first piano tours abroad, between 1888 and 1895. Most of them have been inspired by his impressions of landscapes: He describes the Heidelberg’s castle; a torrent near Dresden that breaks loudly, falling on the rocks; a stream that gently runs towards the river and then flows to the sea; the feeling of solitude, of being abroad.
Despite of the personal story behind the preludes, we want to create a work that captures and extracts the essence of each piece and of the work in general. Skrjabin was obsessed all his life by the romantic idea of the Absolute, of The Work that would reflect the perfection of nature, that would represent a mystical fusion among all the arts.
When Skrjabin writes the preludes Op.11 he is still at the beginning of his career , the images that deeply touch him are inspired by natural events and through the strength that flows naturally without human touch.
Our time in Bogliasco has allowed us to be absorbed while able to listen to the different resonances that each prelude provokes in us, creative listeners. In this way we envisioned a dramaturgy incorporating voice, video and text as a way of integrating the preludes even more together. An imaginative voyage reconfiguring Skrjabin’s emotional musical land.
We imagined setting artistic layers of the preludes in dialogue, facing and crossing each together to form a hybrid work that combines the visual and the auditory, to reveal a new vision of this early Skrjabin work.
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Scenographical sketch:
Video stills:
Maja Jantar 
