Prokofiev, a story - Piano Concerto No 3

Sergéi Sergéievich Prokofiev was early warned that if he intended to become the best representative of the Soviet school of music composition of the 20th century first half, he was going to have some issues with authority and the established order. At the age of eight, the composer who was later to combine tradition and modernity in an exemplary manner had already composed his first opera, entitled "Giant". The opera ends with the giant defeating a very powerful king, a plot solution that did not please his father, who recommended removing that part because it did not suit a clearly monarchical era. According to the composer's mother, Sergéi did not pay attention to such suggestions and the work was premiered at an uncle's house, with no changes to the original libretto.

Early years - The Conservatory
Born in 1891 in the small Ukrainian village of Sonsovka, the little Sergéi early showed a unique talent for music. So, shortly before Sergéi turned fourteen, his parents, an agronomist engineer and a pianist mother decided his entering to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Among his teachers was Rimsky-Korsakov, the star of the Conservatory at that time but from whose lessons Prokofiev did not get any benefit, barely passing the exams. He found the courses unbearable and boring. Consequently, Prokofiev abandoned formal studies at the age of eighteen after receiving the unique diploma of "free artist", due, on the one hand, to his compositional audacity and, on the other hand, to a permanent mutual incomprehension with his teachers.

Private lessons
However, two teachers from the same Conservatory will later provide him with a solid musical background, the fruit of five years of uninterrupted lessons.
He was no longer unknown in St. Petersburg. He was now recognized as a revolutionary for his musical ideas, coupled with a certain intransigence because of his youth. However, his musical predilections would not yet lead him down the path of modernism. Asked in those years for his favourite authors, Prokofiev would name Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Grieg.

Sergéi Prokófiev (1891 - 1953)

Tour through Europe and the US

During the years prior to the October Revolution, Sergéi was not particularly concerned about the course of events, and before the outbreak of the revolution, he responded with a small cantata for tenor, choir and orchestra entitled Seven, they are seven. In 1918 he left Russia, first and foremost because he understood that a country in a full revolution was not the most propitious environment for composing. The end of his long journey through the US and Europe was due to similar reasons. In 1927 he had heard that the Soviet artist, free from material concerns, could devote all his time to creation. Nine years later he settled permanently in Moscow...  he married a Spanish singer, became a father of two children, and turned into a renowned author of a vast instrumental and orchestral work, including chamber, opera and ballet music.

1936, the return
He arrived at a good time because in spite of his flirtations with polytonality and violently dissonant harmonies picked up in his passage through the West, the Soviet authorities had identified his art with the musical conceptions of the revolution. Prokofiev would abandon violent orchestrations and give way to lyricism, also willingly accepting some impositions such as a cantata in homage to the October Revolution with texts by Marx, Lenin and Stalin. Around the same years -1936- his popular symphonic tale Peter and the Wolf was unveiled.

But as nothing lasts forever, ten years later his opera The Story of a Real Man will receive the rejection of the Central Committee, warning in it a certain "formalist and anti-popular orientation" that would be wreaking havoc on Soviet artists, including Shostakovich and Kachaturian, both authors of a work that "reveals in a particularly evident way formalist deviations and antidemocratic musical tendencies foreign to the Soviet people and their artistic tastes."

The end
Not many years of life remained for Prokofiev. Neither did Stalin. But no one expected them both to die on the same day, March 5, 1953. As a result of this ominous coincidence, for three days, as the throngs gathered to mourn Stalin, it was impossible to carry Prokofiev's body out of his home for burial. Furthermore, the newspapers only reported his death several days later.

Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 3, opus 26, in C major
(Use of headphones is recommended)

Of the five piano concertos written by Prokofiev between 1911 and 1932, No. 3, composed between 1917 and 1921, is the one that has garnered the greatest popularity, mainly due to its exceptional melodic and rhythmic innovations.

The concerto was premiered in Chicago on December 16, 1921, with Prokofiev performing as a soloist. In the rendition presented here, the extraordinary Chinese pianist Yuja Wang is accompanied by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by the Italian maestro Daniele Gati. Recording of October 3, 2010, at the Concertgebouw Hall in Amsterdam.

The concerto is in three movements, about ten minutes each: 

Andante - Allegro It opens with a clarinet solo that the orchestra will later take for its development. After a couple of measures, the lyricism of the melody is interrupted at 1:25 by the exuberant entrance of the piano introducing the allegro. The dialogue between orchestra and soloist begins. They will end in unison in an awesome manner.
["Intermezzo" 10:00  At the reproachful or perhaps furtively lascivious look of the conductor, Yuja stretches her skirt, aware that she is showing off a lot of leg.]

Tema con variazioni (10:10) The central theme, in E minor, is followed by five variations. The movement ends in absolute stillness. (Inexplicably, in the beginning, the video puts the legend "Richard Strauss, Don Juan Op 20", a symphonic poem that obviously does not call for a piano, and even less as a soloist).

Allegro ma non-tropo (19:53) Notwithstanding the slow theme of 22:27, which at times seems to pay homage to the exiled Rachmaninov, this is the most overtly virtuous movement in the work. After a novel bitonal passage (the orchestra in G major and the piano in D major), the coda explodes in a hard battle between orchestra and soloist to finally converge in C major, the initial key, in a dramatic fortissimo.