Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season January-February 2018 | Page 35

Heartened by this enthusiasm,
Prokofiev spent the summer of 1921
completing his Third Piano Concerto.
The piece had a long gestation period,
with some of its ideas dating back
as far as 1911. It grew into a work
of remarkable power, containing
all five elements Prokofiev listed in
his autobiography as characteristics
of his music: the “classical,” the
“modernistic,” the “dynamic,” the
“lyrical” and the “humorous.”
This concerto is one of the great tests
of a pianist’s technical virtuosity. “My
Third Concerto has turned out to be
devilishly difficult. I’m nervous and
I’m practicing hard three hours a day,”
he wrote before the Chicago premiere.
To his surprise, the work drew only a
lukewarm response in an America still
uncomfortable with modern music.
But audiences in Europe loved it, and
soon Prokofiev moved to Paris, ruefully
acknowledging that the U.S. wasn’t
ready for him.
In creating a bravura work for
piano, Prokofiev did not slight the
orchestra. Its colorful writing is nearly
equally demanding, and its pungent
woodwinds and soaring strings add a
characteristically Prokofievian blend of
irony and romance. This is a concerto
without a true slow movement; instead,
the composer weaves slower, more lyrical
episodes into all three movements.
The first movement opens with a slow
introduction in which solo clarinet, then
two clarinets, sing a melancholy Russian
melody. Then the orchestra swings into
a fast tempo, and the piano presents the
brilliant, twisting principal theme. Even
more exotic is the second theme, sung by
the oboe above clattering castanets and
featuring crisp, percussive writing for the
piano. On its later return, this second
theme will become harsher, almost
grotesque, with thick piano chords
topped by a shrieking piccolo. Midway
through, the tempo returns to a slower
Andante as the piano rhapsodizes over
the opening Russian theme.
In the second movement, a droll dance
theme in the woodwinds over a march
beat in the strings forms the basis of
41 st A NNUAL
DECOR ATOR S’
SHOW HOUSE
Pr esented by
The Baltimor e
Symphony Associates
COMING
THIS
S PR I N G
www.facebook.com/BSDSH

JA N – F E B 2018 / OV E R T U R E
33