Sergey Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) Piano Concerto No.1 in D Flat Major, Op. 10 Piano Concerto No.3 in C Major, Op. 26 Piano Concerto No.4 in B Flat Major, Op....
Sergey Prokofiev (1891 - 1953)
Piano Concerto No.1 in D Flat Major, Op. 10
Piano Concerto No.3 in C Major, Op. 26
Piano Concerto No.4 in B Flat Major, Op. 53
Sergey Prokofiev was born in 1891 at Sontsovka in the Ukraine, the son
of a prosperous estate manager. An only child, his musical talents were
fostered by his mother, a cultured amateur pianist, and he tried his hand at
composition at the age of five, later being tutored at home by the composer
Glière. In 1904, on the advice of Glazunov, his parents allowed him to enter
the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he continued his studies as a pianist
and as a composer unti1 1914, owing more to the influence of senior
fellow-students Asafyev and Myaskovsky than to the older generation of
teachers, represented by Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Even as a student Prokofiev had begun to make his mark as a composer,
arousing enthusiasm and hostility in equal measure, and inducing Glazunov, now
director of the Conservatory, to walk out of a performance of The Scythian
Suite, fearing for his sense of hearing. During the war he gained exemption
from military service by enrolling as an organ student and after the Revolution
was given permission to travel abroad, at first to America, taking with him the
scores of The Scythian Suite, arranged from a ballet originally commissioned by
Dyagilev, the Classical Symphony and his first Violin Concerto.
Unlike Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, Prokofiev had left Russia with
official permission and with the idea of returning home sooner or later. His
stay in the United States of America was at first successful. He appeared as a
solo pianist and wrote the opera The Love for Three Oranges for the Chicago
Opera. By 1920, however, he had begun to find life more difficult and moved to Paris,
where he re-established contact with Dyagilev, for whom he revised The Tale of
the Buffoon, a ballet successfully mounted in 1921. He spent much of the next
sixteen years in France, returning from time to time to Russia, where his music
was still acceptable.
In 1936 Prokofiev decided to settle once more in his native country,
taking up residence in Moscow in time for the first official onslaught on music
that did not sort well with the political and social aims of the government,
aimed in particular at the hitherto successful opera A Lady Macbeth of the
Mtsensk District by Shostakovich. Twelve years later the name of Prokofiev was
to be openly joined with that of Shostakovich in an even more explicit
condemnation of formalism, with particular reference now to Prokofiev's opera
War and Peace. He died in 1953 on the same day as Joseph Stalin, and thus never
benefited from the subsequent relaxation in official policy to the arts.
As a composer Prokofiev was prolific. His operas include the remarkable
Fiery Angel, first performed in its entirety in Paris the year after his death,
with ballet-scores in Russia for Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella. The last of
his seven symphonies was completed in 1952, the year of his unfinished sixth
piano concerto. His piano sonatas form an important addition to the repertoire,
in addition to his songs and chamber music, film-scores and much else, some
works overtly serving the purposes of the state. In style his music is often
astringent in harmony, but with a characteristically Russian turn of melody
and, whatever Shostakovich may have thought of it, a certain idiosyncratic gift
for orchestration that gives his instrumental music a particular piquancy.
After the death of his father in July 1910 Prokofiev began to turn his
attention to the commercial possibilities in the publication of his music,
without immediate success. During the summer he also began to sketch a piano
concerto, which he completed early in 1912. The work was welcomed by Vladimir
Derzhanovsky for his series of concerts at Sokolniki Park in Moscow and
scheduled for subsequent performance at Pavlovsk, outside St. Petersburg in
August, with Prokofiev making his first appearance as a soloist with an
orchestra. The conductor in Moscow was Konstantin Saradzhev, who secured a
better degree of proficiency from the orchestra than Alexander Aslanov at
Pavlovsk. The concerto had a mixed reception, wild enthusiasm from some and
marked disapproval from others, to the composer's gratification. The concerto,
after all, marked a significant change in Russian music, from the romanticism
of Rachmaninov and Skryabin to a new world of clear and sometimes harsh
contours. Prokofiev chose to play the work at his graduation from the
Conservatory in 1914, in competition for the Anton Rubinstein Prize, a
controversial choice when other students offered Liszt and Saint-Saëns. The
jury was divided, but Prokofiev was eventually awarded the prize, with the
support of his teacher Tcherepnin and former pupils of his piano teacher
Esipova. Glazunov voted against their choice and, as director of the
Conservatory, presented the award with the greatest reluctance.
The Piano Concerto No.1 in D flat
major, Opus 10, dedicated to Nikolay Tcherepnin, is scored for a
full orchestra, its percussion section augmented unusually by tubular bells,
and with transposing instruments written, in what became Prokofiev's normal
practice, as they sound. After resonant D flat chords, the soloist introduces,
with the oboes and later the flutes, thematic material that is to recur,
repeated forcefully three times in the opening section of the work, described
curiously by Prokofiev as "the three whales that hold the concerto
together". The second theme is announced by the soloist, material derived
from an earlier composition, its two rhythmic elements of dotted notes and
triplets later combined and contrasted. The opening theme re-appears, leading
to an Andante episode, introduced by muted strings and followed by an Allegro
scherzando in which the soloist enters after plucked string chords, soon moving
forward to an episode based on the rhythmic second theme, which also opens the
piano cadenza. The initial theme returns to bring the concerto to an energetic
and powerful conclusion.
In 1920 Prokofiev returned from America to Europe and was eventually
joined by his mother in Paris. There was renewed contact with Dyagilev and talk
now of staging The Buffoon
(Chout), commissioned and completed in 1915 after the rejection of the earlier
commissioned ballet, Ala and Lolly, which became the Scythian Suite, to the
distress of Glazunov at the Conservatory. There was a further concert tour in
America and a return to France for the staging of The Buffoon, followed by a
summer in Brittany working on a new piano concerto, for which he relied to some
extent on earlier material, written before he left Russia. In France he renewed
his earlier friendship with the symbolist poet Konstantin Bal'mont, who had
taken refuge abroad after 1918. Prokofiev was the soloist at the first performance
of the new concerto, which took place in Chicago on 16th December 1921, two
weeks before the opening of his opera Love for Three Oranges in the same city.
The Piano Concerto in C major, Opus
26, opens with a Russian theme, a clarinet solo, written in 1916-17,
immediately followed by an energetic Allegro, its impetus continued with the
entry of the solo piano, a third theme being introduced by the soloist, to form
the basis of a movement that ends with an ascending sequence first written down
in 1911. The second movement is in the form of a theme and variations, the
melody itself sketched in 1913 and at first presented primarily by the
woodwind, before the five variations, two of which had been written in 1916-17.
The first variation is given to the soloist, the second accompanied by a stormy
piano part, the third relaxing to lead to an Andante meditativo, and the
brusque fifth variation followed by the re-appearance of the theme, with
percussive accompaniment from the soloist. The last movement makes use of two
themes from a string quartet started but abandoned in 1918. A bassoon melody
starts the movement, two further themes offering a lyrical decrease of tension,
before the percussive energy of the conclusion.
The fourth Piano Concerto was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, the
distinguished Austrian pianist, who had lost his right arm in the war. Ravel
and Richard Strauss had written for him works that he did not care for,
although Benjamin Britten's later Diversions
for Wittgenstein seem to have been better received. He greeted
Prokofiev's concerto coldly, thanking him for the work, but saying that he did
not understand a note of it and would not play it. The composer thought at one
time of rewriting the concerto for two hands, but never did so, and the first
public performance only took place in 1956 in Berlin. The concerto is, in fact,
an attractive work. Its first movement is impelled forwards by that motor
energy that is so characteristic of Prokofiev. There is a gentle enough Andante
and a third movement marked Moderato, and in a modified version of sonata-form.
The last movement in its rhythms, textures, turns of melody and harmonies,
continues in a musical idiom that is characteristic of Prokofiev at the height
of his powers, so that it can only be the peculiar technical difficulties the
work offers a soloist that have prevented wider popularity.
Kun Woo Paik
The Korean pianist Kun Woo Paik studied at the Juilliard School in New
York, in London and in Italy, and now lives in Paris, where he has established
himself as a pianist of rare virtuosity and breadth of vision. He is
particularly well known for his interpretation of the piano music of Ravel and
of Liszt, the second demonstrated in 1982 in an acclaimed series of six
recitals, in Paris repeated with similar success at the Wigmore Hall in London
two years later. Kun Woo Paik has appeared in recitals and as a soloist with
major orchestras throughout Europe and North America. In 1991 he performed in
Poland the five piano concertos of Prokofiev with the Polish National Radio
Symphony Orchestra and recorded them immediately following the concerts. He has
also recorded the complete piano music of Ravel, including the two concertos,
and the complete piano music of Mussorgsky.
The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Katowice (PNRSO)
The Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra of Katowice (PRNSO) was
founded in 1945, soon after the end of the World War II, by the eminent Polish
conductor Witold Rowicki. The PRNSO replaced the Polish Radio Symphony
Orchestra which had existed from 1934 to 1939 in Warsaw, under the direction of
another outstanding artist, Grzegorz Fitelberg. In 1947 Grzegroz Fitelberg
returned to Poland and became artistic director of the PRNSO. He was followed
by a series of distinguished Polish conductors - Jan Krenz, Bohdan Wodiezko,
Kazimierz Kord, Tadeusz Strugala, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Stanislaw Wislocki and,
since 1983, Antoni Wit. The orchestra has appeared with conductors and soloists
of the greatest distinction and has recorded for Polskie Nagrania and many
international record labels.
Antoni Wit
Antoni Wit was born in Cracow in 1944 and studied there, before
becoming assistant to Witold Rowicki with the National Philharmonic Orchestra
in Warsaw in 1967. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and with Penderecki
and in 1971 was a prize-winner in the Herbert von Karajan Competition. Study at
Tanglewood with Skrowaczewski and Seiji Ozawa was followed by appointment as
Principal Conductor first of the Pomeranian Philharmonic and then of the Cracow
Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 1983 he took up the position of Artistic Director
and Principal Conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in
Katowice. Antoni Wit has undertaken many engagements abroad with major orchestras,
ranging from the Berlin Philharmonic and the BBC Welsh and Scottish Symphony
Orchestras to the Kusatsu Festival Orchestra in Japan.
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