SERGEI PROKOFIEV Born 23 April 1891 in Sontzovka, Russia; died 5 March 1953 in Moscow.

Concerto No. 5 in G major for and Orchestra, Opus 55 (1932)

PREMIERE OF WORK: Berlin, 31 October 1932; Berlin Philharmonic; Wilhelm Furtwängler, conductor; , soloist PSO PREMIERE: 10 April 1970; Syria Mosque; Henry Mazer, conductor; Lorin Hollander, soloist APPROXIMATE DURATION: 22 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings.

By 1923, Paris had recovered from the turmoil of the First World War to again become the artistic mecca of Europe — Diaghilev’s was back in full operation (and showing Stravinsky’s new Les Noces); the Opéra premiered Roussel’s Padmâtavî; the Princesse de Polignac arranged for the first staging of Falla’s marionette opera, Master Peter’s Puppet Show; and the city was alive with concerts, recitals and musical events of every ilk, most illustriously those of the recent Russian émigré conductor Sergei Koussevitzky. Koussevitzky was among the greatest champions of the composers of his day, and he performed and commissioned music by Stravinsky, Honegger, Roussel, Ravel, Copland, Gershwin, Bartók and others with unparalleled zeal and dedication. On February 25, 1923, he conducted Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in Paris, and when he scheduled the premiere of that composer’s First Violin Concerto for October 18th, Prokofiev thought that the time had come for him to end his residency in America (and, briefly, Germany), and settle in the French capital. Prokofiev spent the next decade in Paris, imbibing the bracing modernities of Stravinsky, Honegger, Poulenc, Milhaud and the other members of Les Six, and devoting himself exclusively to instrumental and orchestral composition; it was the longest period of his life that did not yield an opera or vocal work. By 1932, however, he had grown eager to return home to Soviet Russia, where he would have to hide his avant-garde candle under a very tightly controlled “music-for-the-masses” bushel, so his last works in Paris — the Piano Concerto No. 5 (Op. 55), Sonata for Two Violins (Op. 56), Symphonic Song (Op. 57) and Cello Concerto (Op. 58) — form a sort of farewell to the modernism that had been a prominent strain in his creative personality since his days at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The Piano Concerto No. 5 is disposed, unusually, in five movements, all concise. There is an abundance of thematic material in the opening Allegro, of which the repetitions and permutations of three ideas help provide guidance through the form: the piano’s steely, angular initial motive; a lyrical, dreamy violin melody; and a haughty, striding tune led by the trumpet. Much of what follows derives from the letter and spirit of these musical components. The recapitulation includes reprises of just the piano’s opening motive and the haughty trumpet theme. The two kinds of music that are opposed in the second movement — one slowly ticking and mechanistic (A); the other, gentler and flowing (B) — are arranged in a familiar structural pattern: A—B—A—B (with a curiously severe inserted episode)—A. The is a virtuoso piece (its name, in use since the 16th century, derives from the Italian word “toccare” — “to touch” — indicating a rapid virtuoso “touching” of the keyboard) during which the trumpet twice proclaims its haughty theme from the first movement. The Concerto’s most touching sentiments are contained in the Larghetto, which takes a tender nocturne as its principal theme; a central section comprising a brief, scherzo-like episode and a stern passage of increasing intensity provides expressive and formal balance. The finale consists of three parts: the first is energetic and anxious; the second (with a bassoon duet), quiet and mysterious; the last, confident and athletic.