1st piano concerto (Prokofiev)
Sergei Prokofiev composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D flat major, opus 10, in 1911. The premiere took place on July 15, 1912 in Moscow with Prokofiev as the pianist. In its single movement it is the shortest of his concerts with a duration of around 15 minutes.
The concert is divided into three parts, which, however, do not count as separate movements:
- Allegro brioso (7–8 min)
- Andante assai (4–5 min)
- Allegro scherzando (4–5 min)
music
Even the composer's first piano concerto clearly bears his signature, although Prokofiev's romantic predecessors can still be felt. The theme , a melody performed in octaves , is very similar to the themes of other octave-shaped concerts. Examples of such concerts are the 1st Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff or the concerts by Franz Liszt . The great importance and ingenious control of the parameter rhythm is, however, a peculiarity of Prokofiev, which is as groundbreaking as it is novel in music. The composer himself said of the form: “It is a sonata allegro in which the introduction is repeated after the exposition and again at the end, and there is a short andante before the development. The development is in the form of a scherzo, and a cadenza prepares the recapitulation. "
reception
Many youth concerts, for example the 1st Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff , eke out a kind of shadowy existence at the time of their composition due to the not yet so pronounced artistic maturity of their composers. Not so Prokofiev's first piano concerto, although, like Rachmaninoff's first concerto, it was composed while he was still a student.
Almost all pianists Prokofiev have in their repertoire have mastered it. Often the combinations of the piano concertos 1, 3 and 5 or 1, 2 and 3. Rudolf Kehrer had great success with it in the Soviet Union after winning an important competition with this concert in the finals, and this work is also otherwise enjoying in the Concert life very popular.
A certain superficiality was criticized at the concert immediately after its creation, whereupon the composer conceived the 2nd piano concerto completely differently. However, this has not changed the fact that the composer was awarded the Anton Rubinstein Medal by the Saint Petersburg Conservatory for his pianistic performance in the performance of the work .