Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 07/14/2012, uploaded on 12/12/2012

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Arranged for a sextet by Atar Arad

In his younger years as a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Sergei Prokofiev became known as an enfant terrible. In the eyes of his classmates, he was arrogant and eccentric, and he had no qualms expressing his dissatisfaction over the curriculum. His early compositions, in a sense, were no different. Many of these works were virtuosic pieces written for the piano, which he used as vehicles for his own use as a pianist. Modernistic compositions, they employed extensive chromaticism, biting dissonances, and recent techniques such as polytonality. Several of these works, like the Second Piano Concerto, caused scandals within Russia’s musical community. Some decried and ridiculed such “futuristic” music; sympathetic modernists, however, were enraptured.

Among these pieces was the Toccata of 1912. Embracing the “touch piece” so familiar in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and other Baroque composers, the work has nothing in common with its remote predecessors save for its focus on technical display and prowess. And that it accomplishes quite well, utilizing a sort of moto perpetuo to create its incessant energy and pyrotechnics. Published that same year, Prokofiev himself later publicly premiered the Toccata in St. Petersburg on December 10, 1916. It has since become quite popular, a favorite among virtuoso pianists particularly as an encore piece. Though in this role, its reputation has suffered somewhat as being nothing more than a mere Lisztian-type showpiece devoid of most artistic value. Nevertheless, it remains popular with pianists and also with composers, who have mimicked its driving rhythms and virtuosic energy in their own compositions.     Joseph DuBose

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.