Sergei Prokofiev - Scythian Suite

The nice thing about being in charge of a 24Classics playlist is that it gives me a reason to both seek out new music and to go through my own collection to find suitable pieces. When your music collection has grown to a certain size sometimes you forget to listen to certain albums for months (… if not years) and the re-discovery tends to be a really happy moment. My most recent one has been Prokofiev's Scythian Suite which I absolutely love. It's fun and loud and full of brassy goodness.

Today I found out that there is a video of my favourite orchestra (the Rotterdam Philharmonic, of course) playing it (conducted by Valery Gergiev), so obviously I have to share it:

It is not the best recording because it's from a VHS tape and therefore a bit grainy, if that annoys you you can go here to see Claudio Abbado and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra play it (also a good version, but not as violent as Gergiev's). 

The Scythian Suite was written by Prokofiev in 1915 (Prokofiev was 24 when he composed it), though in its original form it was a ballet called Ala and Lolli, and it was commissioned and rejected by Diagheliv and the Ballet Russes (why it was rejected is a mystery to me, it's such a good piece). Prokofiev reworked the music into a suite, which consists of four movements and lasts around 20 minutes. It's very fast and energetic for most of these 20 minutes, and calls for a large orchestra which might explain why it's not performed as often as it should be. The piece was eventually premiered in 1916 (the first premiere was cancelled because of a lack of musicians) and apparently was quite a riot. As we can read in my favourite book on music;

"Crashing Siberias, volcano hell, Krakatoa, sea-bottom crawlers. Incomprehensible? So is Prokofiev. A splendid tribute was paid to his Scythian Suite in Petrograd by Glazunov. The poor tortured classicist walked out of the hall during the performance of the work. No one walked out of the Aelian Hall but several respectable pianists ran out."  (Musical America, November 20 1918)

I hope you enjoy it more than Glazunov did.

Other YPGTCM posts on Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet, Piano Concerto No.2, Piano Sonata No.6.  

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Sonata No.6

After two violin-centric posts it's probably about time for something else, right? So I thought it might be a good idea to post a piano sonata! It is by one of my favourite Russians, Sergei Prokofiev, who wrote a huge amount of fantastic piano music. The Piano Sonata No.6 was the first piano sonata I actually listened to on my own all the way through (a recording by Evgeny Kissin that I "borrowed" from my parents) quite a few years ago. I love it because it's energetic and fun and diverse yet it's still rather affecting and just wonderful.

   

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Sonata No.6 - Mvt.1: Allegro moderato. 
Played by Nikolai Lugansky (I'm still waiting for CDs of him playing all of Prokofiev's piano concertos, seriously don't understand why these don't exist yet) 

The Piano Sonata No.6 (1940) is a four-movement work for solo piano. I once tried to play it but my hands couldn't even reach to play the opening chords, so it wasn't quite succesful. I've read lots of conflicting opinions about the sonata, some find it overly simple and don't find enough (emotional) depth in it, but there's also lots of people for whom it's their favourite sonata. And legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter said this about it: "The remarkable clarity of style and structural perfection of the music amazed me. I hadn't heard anything like it before. The composer, with barbaric audacity, breaks with the ideals of the Romantics and includes the shattering pulse of the twentieth century in his music." (From Sergei Prokofiev by Daniel Jaffé). If you like bombastic Russians writing amazing melodies and being jealous of pianists, then I'm sure you'll like it too. If you're only into Chopin/Satie/the piano as a calming instrument, you might not be so keen. But give it a try anyway! 

Other YPGTCM posts on Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet, Piano Concerto No.2.

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No.2

Prokofiev's piano concertos are probably my favourite piano concertos. The second and third especially, they are so fantastic. A while ago I was lucky enough to see my beloved Nikolai Lugansky play the second (I've already seen him play the third a few times) and it just confirmed for me how fantastic that piece is. Here is the third movement:

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No.2: III Intermezzo - Allegro moderato. 
Played by Nikolai Lugansky, conductor is Vladimir Jurowski but I don't know what orchestra it is.

Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.2 was first performed in 1913 when Prokofiev was only 22 years old. Unfortunately the score was lost during the Russian revolution and Prokofiev used sketches he still had of the piece to reconstruct it, with some considerable revisions (though we will obviously never know what the revisions were). He said later of these revisions that they turned the piece into something different altogether and that it was "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered no. 4". Apparently it is one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire and it's definitely one of the most exciting ones! It consists of four movements, apart from the third I posted in here there's Mvt. 1: Andantino-Allegretto Part 1, Mvt 1 Part 2, Mvt 2: Scherzo - vivace (so ridiculously fast!), Mvt. 4: Allegro tempestoso Part 1 (this part is great for Lugansky's Amazing Bouncing Hands), Mvt. 4 Part 2.

On an unrelated note, I have written a few more reviews for bachtrack.com since I last posted: The opening night of Haarlem's Koorbiennale with pieces by Feldman, Gubaidulina, Manneke and Ešenvalds, Ravel, Prokofiev and Dvorak in the Concertgebouw and Debussy, Saint-Saëns and Franck, also in the Concertgebouw. As always, any and all feedback is welcome.

Other YPGTCM posts on Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet

Sergei Prokofiev - Romeo and Juliet

Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is one of my favourite ballets. It's beautiful to watch and to listen to, and also has some of the most well-known pieces of classical music ever. So a lot of you will have heard this before, it's used in countless commercials, films, tv shows etc. It is an incredible piece of music:


Sergei Prokofiev - The Montagues and Capulets (also known as Dance of the Knights) from "Romeo and Juliet".

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) is another one of my favourite composers (I do like the Russians a lot), apart from Romeo and Juliet he wrote a bunch of operas (my favourite is The Love for Three Oranges), some more ballets, 7 symphonies, 6 amazing piano concertos (especially the 3rd, which I will definitely write about soon), 2 violin concertos, 2 cello concertos and well, lots more. I think that apart from Romei and Juliet his most famous work might be Peter and the Wolf, for narrator and orchestra. Prokofiev spent a couple of years living in the USA, because he felt there was no place for his music in Russia (which was probably true). He did return to Russia in 1935 which in a way was kind of unfortunate, because there was really still no place for his music in Russia. Like Shostakovich, Prokofiev was vilified by the Russian authorities for writing "formalist" music, and a lot of his works were never performed, or cancelled after only a few performances (and even worse, his wife was actually arrested for being a "spy" and sentenced to 20 years!). Prokofiev died on exactly the same day as Stalin, although I wish he would've outlived him and could've seen how well-loved his music is now.

If you enjoy this piece of music, give the rest of the ballet a listen, like The Death of Tybalt, Juliet as a Young Girl and Masks (with actual ballet footage), and also the piano version (played by Evgeny Kissin).

And I want to say thank you for those of you that comment on the posts! I really do want to hear what you think of the pieces.