2nd piano concerto (Prokofiev)

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Sergei Prokofiev composed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, opus 16, from 1912 to 1913; the premiere took place in the summer of 1913 in Pavlovsk (Saint Petersburg) near St. Petersburg. It is dedicated to his fellow student and friend Maximilian Schmidthof, who had recently committed suicide. The work was received negatively by the majority of music critics and the majority of the audience. During the First World War, the original score was lost, presumably it was burned. In 1923 Prokofiev was forced to write a new orchestration, which was played for the first time in Paris the following year. Prokofiev himself was the soloist in both premieres. Between 1929, when Prokofiev last performed it, and in 1949, when Jorge Bolet played it in New Orleans , the concerto was not performed, according to the publisher Boosey & Hawkes (who awards the orchestral parts). Bolet also played the work for the first time in 1953, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and its then chief conductor Thor Johnson on the small Remington Records label .

music

The composition is one of the more well-known musical works of the modern age , but besides its dissonant passages typical of Expressionism it also contains extensive romantic sections. The concerto is divided into four movements, which are designated as follows.

  1. Andantino Allegretto (10-14 minutes)
  2. Scherzo: Vivace (2-3 minutes)
  3. Intermezzo: Allegro moderato (5–9 minutes)
  4. Finale: Allegro tempestoso (10–13 minutes)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ To Appreciation of Jorge Bolet ( Memento from September 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )