1. Andantino - Andante assai
2. Scherzo. Vivacissimo
3. Moderato - Allegro moderato - Moderato - Più
tranquillo
Sergey Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka in the Ukraine.
His father was an agricultural engineer who managed
a large estate. His mother was well-educated and a good
pianist. She began to teach Sergey the piano when he
was just three years old, and also encouraged him to
compose - by the age of nine he had completed an opera!
In 1902 he studied with the composer Reinhold Glière
and two years later entered the St. Petersburg Conservatoire
where his teachers included Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Having graduated in 1909, he undertook further studies
of the piano and conducting.
1911 was a real landmark for Prokofiev seeing the composition
of his first major works - 2 piano sonatas and his first
piano concerto. The first performance of the concerto
caused something of an uproar and was the first of many
controversial works.
In 1914, whilst in London, he met Diaghilev who commissioned
a ballet from the young composer. The First World War
put paid to the realisation of this idea, although Prokofiev
had started composition - the music was eventually used
in his "Scythian Suite".
Prokofiev composed his first symphony - the brilliant
"Classical Symphony" - in 1917 and the next
year, after the symphony's first performance in Petrograd,
left Russia for America. He moved to Paris in 1920,
but was never really at home there and eventually returned
to Russia in 1933. Back in Russia he composed a series
of major works including film scores (including "Lieutenant
Kijé" and "Alexander Nevsky" from
which he later extracted a suite and a cantata, respectively)
and ballets (including "Romeo and Juliet"
and "Cinderella").
His greatest symphonic achievement, the fifth symphony,
was composed in 1944. It was a great success, but this
did not prevent Prokofiev from being included in the
group of composers condemned by the State in the notorious
'Zhdanov Decree' of 1948. In it, the composers were
criticised for 'formalism' - an alleged over-emphasis
on form rather than content with the further suggestion
that this made the music too modern and discordant.
Prokofiev was forced to confess his shortcomings in
an open letter to the Union of Soviet Composers. After
all the problems which this caused, Prokofiev's health
began to decline. He attended his final concert in October
1952 for the first performance of his seventh symphony.
He died from a brain haemorrhage on 5th March 1953,
ironically the same day that Stalin died. Prokofiev
was a unique voice in twentieth century music. His dissonant
and almost avant-garde early works belied the fact that
he was really a romantic melodist at heart. This combination
of modernist and traditionalist blended to produce his
distinctive compositional style.
Prokofiev began work on what was to become his first
violin concerto in 1915. At that stage it was conceived
as a concertino, but its beautiful opening theme and
melodic quality were very different to his more usual
angry, almost brutal, modernist style. The concertino
remained uncompleted, but the following year Prokofiev
attended a concert in St. Petersburg where he heard
the Polish violinist Pawel Kochánski play works
by his fellow countryman Karol Szymanowski, with the
composer at the piano. Prokofiev was enchanted by
Kochánski's playing, and with his assistance
took the unfinished concertino and developed it into
a full concerto within a matter of weeks in early
1917. He orchestrated the concerto during a cruise
on the Volga and Kama rivers shortly afterwards. The
events of October 1917 in Russia and Prokofiev's subsequent
self-imposed foreign exile meant that the concerto
had to wait until 18th October 1923 for its premiere
when it was performed in Paris with the 18-year-old
Marcel Darrieux as soloist. It was not an immediate
success. Stravinsky, whose Octet was on the same concert
programme, was quite taken by the concerto, but other
critics were scathing in their comments - the work
was simply not seen as being sufficiently 'modern'.
It was not until it was taken up by Joseph Szigeti
and subsequently David Oistrakh that it began to be
seen as one of the masterpieces of the concerto repertoire.
