Mira T. Sundara Rajan is a Canadian pianist, and a fourth-generation musician and writer. She is a great-granddaughter of Indian National Poet, C. Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), a poet and composer of modern classical songs in the Carnatic tradition of South India

Mira has had the privilege of training with leading musicians and teachers, including Wolfram Linnebach, Raymond Fisher, Jane Coop, Jacinthe Couture, and Marc Durand. She has performed widely, and her playing has been described by Deepa Alexander of The Hindu, India’s national newspaper, as “much better than …perfect.”

In May 2025, Mira was Artist in Residence at the Orford Arts Center in Québec, Canada.

Mira’s involvement in music is informed by the Indian aesthetic concept of “rasa”: the quest for the “essence, juice, taste, water, blood, elixir, beauty, [or] sentiment,” in her great-grandfather’s words, of musical experience. Her ongoing “Scriabin Project” is dedicated to exploring the works of Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915), the cosmopolitan Russian composer whose unique compositions from the early twentieth century were informed by his knowledge of Indian mysticism, and whose music offers a fascinating bridge between West and East.

Mira is also a scholar and a prominent advocate for artists’ rights. She holds a DPhil in Law from Oxford University, and she has held prestigious professorships as well as visiting positions at universities around the world – including Stanford Law School and UC San Francisco (formerly Hastings College of the Law) here in the Bay Area. Mira’s work has shaped the law protecting artists in India and informed policy on authors’ and artists’ rights in Western and Eastern Europe, the UK, Korea, Japan, Canada, and the United States.

Mira’s most recent book is a work dedicated to protecting artists’ and authors’ rights in the age of AI. She has also edited works originally written in the English language by her great-grandfather and published them in a new collection as a Penguin Modern Classics book in 2021.

Mira’s most recent media appearance is an interview about authors’ rights for a popular podcast, The History of Literature.

Mira’s own podcast, Woman of Culture, features a discussion with the extraordinary Scriabin scholar, Simon Nicholls, and an interview with virtuoso pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin, to be released this month.

Program Notes

Toccata in C Minor, BWV 911 – J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

In his youth, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote 7 “toccatas” for keyboard. “Toccata” refers to touch, and these pieces are virtuosic illustrations of the potential of keyboard harmony. Each one typically includes multiple “movements,” and in the case of the C minor toccata, there are four such episodes: a prelude-like introduction, a deeply contemplative slow movement, and not one, but two lively and interesting fugues: a fugue with a single theme followed by a double fugue, where the figure accompanying the theme becomes a new theme in its own right. While the fugues may not match the complexity of those in the Well-Tempered Clavier, they are richly endowed with their own, wonderfully unique qualities of character, drama, and imagination.

The entire piece, and most obviously the opening prelude-like section, has a highly improvisatory feeling. This Toccata brings out the originality of every performer who has the pleasure of playing it!

Selected Preludes, Opus 11 – Alexander N. Scriabin (1872-1915)

1. 1 in C Major – Vivace

Originally marked Ondeggiante, carezzando by the young nonconformist – wave-like and caressing. Composed in 1893 or 1895.

2. 2 in A minor – Allegretto (composed 1895)

Such complex emotions are at play in this elegant little waltz!

The great Soviet pianist and Scriabin interpreter, Sviatoslav Richter, is said to have remarked that this Prelude reminded him of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 8:

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,
Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

3. 3 in G Major – Vivo (composed 1895)

As lively, indeed, as the coming and going of small birds on a busy spring day – or of any other lively natural scene that might come to the listener’s mind – in the work of a composer who was deeply, continually inspired by nature.

4. 5 in D Major – Andante cantabile (composed 1896)

In this piece, as in others among Scriabin’s earlier works, we can see the influence of Chopin: the cello-like pattern in the left hand is reminiscent of Chopin’s étude known as “the Cello” (Op. 25 No. 7, in C-sharp minor). But look more closely, and you might be surprised. We are now in 1896 (Chopin’s étude dates from 1834), and Scriabin has stepped boldly into the 20^th century – and beyond – initiating a world of modern sentiments where the artist speaks to us in terms of unprecedented frankness, intimacy, and vulnerability. The individual personality of the composer is laid bare before the listener. Ever the innovator, the seeds of Scriabin’s innovative spirit are right here for us to discover in his early, and superficially simplest and most “conventional,” works.

5. 11 in B Major – Allegro assai (composed 1895)

This great prelude, one of the longest and most complex in Opus 11, flirts with Wagnerian harmonies, but its exquisite wanderings finally lead to a very personal place of wonder and transcendence.

6. 12 in G-Sharp Minor – Andante (composed 1895)

A miniature masterpiece, this piece is a study in suppressed emotion. The yearning upward patterns outline a descending melody. The music never takes flight – instead, it is continually pulled back and constrained within a tight, unyielding structural framework.

In the second part, the swooping contours and vibrant colors seem to herald relief, but, again, they are ominously contained within the framework of a descending melody that allows no true flight or freedom. Sure enough, the ghostly echoes of a Russian liturgy intervene. Like a shadow of itself now, the second theme repeats, but in a completely different mood: what was once hope has become mere memory. In a small but fascinating twist, Scriabin asks the performer to improvise the length of the topmost notes in this repeated passage, offering each performer of this piece a chance to explore their own unique, individual sense of time and narrative.

Again, the liturgy intervenes, and the piece concludes with a completely “open” chord – G-sharp, yes, but with no third interval sounded, meaning that this ending is in neither a major nor a minor key. Instead, we are launched into the unknown.

An innovator indeed.

Sonata No. 2 in G-sharp Minor (Sonata-Fantasy) (composed 1892-97) – Alexander N. Scriabin (1872-1915)

This Sonata picks up where the Prelude in the same key left off: with the same open chord in its dramatic opening statement. Scriabin spent 5 years composing this Sonata. The second movement, in particular, gave him some trouble, but the work eventually became a mainstay of his concert programs. It was inspired by nature – by the sea. He wrote:

“…the first movement represents the quiet of a southern night on the seashore; the development is the dark agitations of the deep, deep sea. The E-major middle section shows caressing moonlight coming after the first darkness of the night. The second movement, Presto, represents the vast expanse of ocean stormily agitated.”

1. Andante
2. Presto

Preludes, Opus 32, No. 10 in B minor and No. 12 in G-sharp minor – S. Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Rachmaninoff and Scriabin were friends and classmates at the Moscow Conservatory, where they had many of the same teachers. Perhaps as a result of this shared background, their piano music, in particular, is often spoken of as being similar. However, the similarities are arguably superficial ones, primarily the result of their common grounding in the revolutionary piano music of Chopin. Chopin’s music deeply colored the musical development of both Russian composers and helped to define their treatment of the piano as an instrument.

Listening to Rachmaninoff and Scriabin together is a wonderful illustration of how similar artistic means, in the hands of two gifted artists, can still lead to a completely individual flowering of genius. These were two very different artistic personalities who remained closely connected, whose particular form of artistic communion was unique. When Scriabin died, Rachmaninoff canceled all his other engagements and toured Russia, playing his works. There can be no higher evidence of the esteem in which he held his friend, rival, and fellow pianist-composer.

The massive B minor Prelude was Rachmaninoff’s favorite of his own preludes. The fleeting but richly colored and dramatic Prelude in G-sharp minor is in the same key that inspired Scriabin in his second Sonata, and in the extraordinary miniature of his Opus 11 Prelude played earlier.