The genre of piano sonata is one of the most significant sphere in Alexander Skriabin's (1872-1915) creation. Twenty years lay between his First and Tenth Sonatas. It occured to be the age satiated with impetuous fruitful ideas, leading the composer sometimes to new contrasting spiritual aims.
The sonata-symphonic structure attracted Skriabin by its inner diversity and capacity, able to embody discrepant unity. Skriabin was the true composer-pianist. Therefore he interpreted the sonata structure rather random, as if being begotten again and again. Those were his philosophical and symbolic conceptions to have become his guides both in life and art.
The last five sonatas (No 6-10) are marked by their evident connection with Skriabin's last completed score of ''Prometheus'' (1910) so as the unrealized plot of the ''Mystery''. Here the composer resorts to his own discoveries in the sphere of thematical elaboration and harmony.
The Sonata No 8 op. 66 was created togetherwith the Ninth and Tenth ones in 1912-1913. That period brought ponderable intellectual influence into Skriabin's thinking, which burst out in tragic element. October 30, 1913, was the day of its premiere, when the author himself performed it in Moscow.