Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 02/22/1999, uploaded on 11/24/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In 1913, Prokofiev received a letter from his close friend Maximilian Schmidthof, with whom he had attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The letter read, in part, “I am reporting the latest news to you. I have shot myself.” Schmidthof had committed suicide in April of that year in a forest in Finland. After learning the news, Prokofiev dedicated his Second Piano Concerto to the memory of his friend. Prokofiev spent the summer learning the concerto as he traveled Western Europe with his mother, and on August 23, he premiered it at Pavlovsk. The work immediately sparked opposite reactions from audience and critics alike—some praised the work; others mocked the composer and scathingly denounced the work. However, this became a common feature of performances of Prokofiev’s music.

During the Russian Revolution in 1917, the original manuscript of the Second Piano Concerto was destroyed in a fire in Prokofiev’s apartment in St. Petersburg. In 1923, he reconstructed the piece from memory, and in the process extensively revised it. Indeed, after completing this new version, Prokofiev himself remarked that it was so vastly rewritten that it could have been his Fourth Concerto (the Third had premiered two years earlier). This new version, Prokofiev premiered in Paris in 1924.

Spanning four movements, the Second Piano Concerto is one of the most technically challenging concertos in the repertoire. Even Prokofiev himself, a more than capable pianist, encountered difficulties when he attempted to perform the work again in the 1930s after it had “gone out of his fingers.” Lasting roughly half of an hour, the two lengthy outer movements take up much of this time and frame two shorter middle movements. The first movement embodies a sonata form, but is dominated by a sprawling cadenza that spans the entire development section and part of the recapitulation. A terse Scherzo follows and is imbued with a relentlessness driven by the incessant unisons of the soloist. Abandoning a true slow movement, the third is titled “Intermezzo.” Yet, this title seems somewhat ill-suited for the dark and foreboding demeanor of the movement. Lastly, the Allegro tempestuoso finale manages to return to the lyricism of the first movement while also justifying its tempo marking.       Joseph DuBose

Performed live at Gammage Auditorium in Tempe, AZ