Piano Concerto No.2

As a student in 1907, SERGEI PROKOFIEV decided that he had discovered a new kind of music—the piano concerto. He immediately divided the concertos he knew into two categories: those he admired for their melody and technical brilliance, such as the concertos by Beethoven, Liszt, Rimsky‑Korsakov, Tchaikovsky’s First, Saint‑Saëns’s Second and Fourth, and Rachmaninoff, and those that did not excite him, including the concertos of Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, and Scriabin. Prokofiev developed the habit of collecting themes that struck him with their beauty in a separate notebook. Among them were excerpts from Wagner, Rimsky‑Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky. The opening theme of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 also appears there, and it became a model for Prokofiev when composing his own Piano Concerto No. 1. Of the composer’s five piano concertos, the most impressive and frequently performed are the ‘student’ Concerto No. 1 and Concerto No. 3 (written in Paris in 1921, brilliant in its orchestration and captivating in its melody). Concerto No. 4 (for the left hand, intended for Paul Wittgenstein) and Concerto No. 5 (completed in 1932) are more specialised works and have not become regular repertoire pieces. Piano Concerto No. 2 is not among his most prominent works and is performed relatively rarely. It was composed in the spring of 1913, when Prokofiev was studying at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. At that time, he admired the manifesto of the group of futurist poets, written by the nineteen‑year‑old Vladimir Mayakovsky. In the pamphlet A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, Mayakovsky rejects traditional forms of expression and calls for individualism and nonconformity in art. During Prokofiev’s student years, the influence of his close friend and fellow student Maximilian Schmidthoff was particularly important and professionally significant. While Prokofiev was working on the score of his Second Piano Concerto in April 1913, he received a letter from Schmidthoff in which the latter bid him farewell and revealed his intention to commit suicide. Some musicians have found traces of the composer’s indirect dialogue with his friend within the score. The concerto is dedicated to Schmidthoff, as are Prokofiev’s Second and Fourth Piano Sonatas. After the premiere on 5 September in Pavlovsk, where the composer performed the solo part, the reactions were mostly negative. The audience gradually left the hall, and the few remaining listeners whistled and shouted. The press published reviews such as: ‘The music drives you crazy’ or ‘Cats on the roof produce better music’, while others wrote that it was ‘a brilliant work—innovative, spirited, and original’. In 1918, during Prokofiev’s first tour of the United States, a fire in his home destroyed the manuscript of the concerto. Six years later, Prokofiev rewrote the concerto on the basis of his surviving drafts. The premiere of this second version took place on 8 May 1924 in Paris, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. Prokofiev’s hallmark in piano literature remains his distinctive percussive treatment of the instrument, his stylisation of early classical ideas through the language of the twentieth century, his specific emotional states, exceptional dynamic contrasts, characteristic musical imagery, as well as his use of parody and humour.