"In his last years, Skryabin realized a noble and great idea. Inspired by his study of theosophical writings, he dreamed of joining music, poetry, mime, architecture, light, colour and even aromas to create a ''Gesamtkunstwerk'', and thus elevate human beings to a higher level of consciousness. This ''Mysterium'' was never completed, but his late piano sonatas - conceived as preliminary studies - enable us to see what moved Skryabin. He spent a particularly long time working on his eighth sonata and proofread it intensively but later quite a few mistakes still found their way into it. Thanks to the autograph and the first edition, ambiguous passages have now been cleared up and corrected in our Urtext edition."