Prokofiev Violin Concerto No

PROKOFIEV VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 1 SYMPHONY NO. 3 CHOUT RÊVES ALEXANDER LAZAREV conductor VADIM REPIN violin SIMON CALLOW narrator LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA SERGEI PROKOFIEV The First World War and its aftermath played I represented in the past and what I have now havoc with the hopes and dreams of the young become.’ Prokofiev. Up to 1915, his path seemed easy and assured: from the creation of snappy piano Perhaps Prokofiev did not revise the miniatures and an early symphony in 1908 to work simply because it represents that the one-act ballet commissioned by Diaghilev impressionistic, late-romantic vein so well, and several weeks before war broke out, all went because the orchestration – including triple well. It was with incredible confidence, not woodwind, six horns and two harps – is, for to say clairvoyance, that Prokofiev declared in the piece in question, unimprovable. In his that year, ‘I am in no doubt that given time my autobiography, hardly less blunt than the more classic status will be beyond contention’. immediate 1927 diary, Prokofiev admits that the dedication of Dreams to Scriabin – clearly Undeniably true, but Prokofiev was destined there in the manuscripts to ‘the composer who to see many important projects fall by the began with Reverie’ – shows more resolve to wayside, productions cancelled – including the follow in the footsteps of his then-idol than original operatic settings of Dostoyevsky’s The the music itself. Indeed, the obsessive opening Gambler and Bryusov’s The Fiery Angel, stalling figurations on muted second violas and violins over which led him to rework the material into bring us closer to a work he mentions in his third symphony – and much else turn to connection with Autumnal, Rachmaninoff’s dust and ashes in the years following his return haunting The Isle of the Dead. The two melodic to the Soviet Union in 1936. Back in 1911, ideas are suggestive and atmospheric rather however, he had everything to hope for. Rêves than expansive, and there are two rich (Dreams) was one of the few works he did not climaxes, restrained in comparison to Scriabin subsequently revise, unlike its more sombre who made such a powerful impact on the companion-piece Autumnal. In 1927 Konstantin adolescent Prokofiev and his fellow students, Sarazhev, the conductor responsible for its but effective none the less; after the first, initial success in May 1911, resurrected Dreams earlier dreams resurface in their original form during Prokofiev’s first visit to what was now and after the second the music returns to its the Soviet Union. Describing it in his diary as hypnotic starting point. ‘sweet, gentle, rather soporific’, the composer observed: ‘if my style has changed now, so Having anticipated conducting Dreams himself much the better: everybody will see what in August 1913, when in fact he only played the solo role in his First Piano Concerto – and Braving a difficult journey through war-torn after sketching ‘a beautiful, tender theme’ Europe in 1915, Prokofiev met up again with for an intended Violin Concertino, Prokofiev Diaghilev, his new young lover the dancer set off for Berlin, Paris – where, inter alia, he and choreographer Leonide Massine and – saw the Ballets Russes’ Petrushka (though not eventually – Stravinsky to discuss a different the new sensation of the season, The Rite of theme. This was to give a novel twist on Spring) – and London, where he witnessed the sadism inflicted on Stravinsky’s puppet Diaghilev’s selective version of Mussorgsky’s Petrushka. A fantastical, desensitised reflection Boris Godunov orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov of the Russian capacity for wife-battering, with Chaliapin in the title role. One year later so unflinchingly depicted in Maxim Gorky’s he finally met the great impresario in London, autobiographical writings, Chout (The Buffoon) first for lunch and a play-through including his is a vivid tale drawn from Alexander Afanasyev’s Second Piano Concerto which ‘sent him into comprehensive folk-tale collection, with plenty ecstasies,’ according to the 1914 diary, then of scope for laughter at its ingenious savagery. a second meeting at the Cecil Hotel where Diaghilev wondered if the Concerto might be The voluminous ballet score starts with what choreographed, and finally at the Savoy. This Prokofiev described as ‘whirring and rattling… time Diaghilev recommended meeting up with as if dust were being wiped off the orchestra ‘a proper Russian writer, [Sergey] Gorodetsky, at the beginning of the performance’. Curtain for example’ when Prokofiev returned to up: enter the buffoon and his wife, sidling on St Petersburg. with a sinuous, Russia-meets-the-east melody on solo wind against a seething chromatic The result, Ala and Lolly, based on a tale of backdrop typical of Prokofiev’s style in the Russian’s primitive ancestors, was too close 1920s; the buffoon explains his plan and they to the world of The Rite of Spring for comfort; execute a spangled victory dance complete Diaghilev never cared for repetition of a with brilliant orchestral chuckles. Seven other successful formula. Much of the music was buffoons appear in a garish wash of orchestral repackaged into the Scythian Suite, which colour to watch a pantomime they take for real; was something of a succès de scandale at its the buffoon and his wife argue in discordant concert premiere in the summer concert hall of Scythian style, he strikes her supposedly Pavlovsky outside St Petersburg. dead at the height of the brassy discords and resurrects her with his ‘magic’ whip to a mysterious weave of clarinets. The dupes take Brass discords hail the arrival of the merchant, counsel, buy the whip and clear the stage for a true Russian to judge from his singing theme, the conspirators to rejoice in their good luck. which is subjected to ever thicker orchestration as he falls in love, not with any of the Another densely supported melody with daughters, but with the cook. Brassy violence oriental inflections introduces us to the home then reaches its apogee as the unsuccessful of the seven buffoons. Their waiting wives are would-be-brides are soundly thrashed. altogether more delicate, but the brutes are back and a sharp-edged fugato on the scene’s The longest of the interludes makes no opening melody leads to a shrill repetition of return to the opening mockery, but instead the first wife-murder – this time for real. glides serenely into the merchant’s bedroom, There are wry hints of the charlatan’s music where he serenades his new love on the from Petrushka as the buffoons vainly ply the wedding-night; the buffoon’s embarrassment whip (an upward flick of piccolo and piano). is represented by a pecking motif on cor A frantic, whirling reapplication of the whip anglais and morbid trumpets, resulting in the achieves nothing and the buffoons mourn oddest of love duets. The merchant lets his the most feminine of the wives’ themes in an quacking, indisposed ‘bride’ down from the Andante lugubre. Back at buffoon No. 1’s house bedroom window in a sheet; but his sweet there is panic – with a rare touch of metrical dreams are shattered by what comes back up: variety – before the vengeful seven return. The a goat – witchcraft! Panic breaks out on violins uproar cuts short as the buffoon reappears playing sul ponticello (close to the bridge of the disguised as his own sister. The buffoons instrument); the servants arrive and shake the interrogate the ‘sister’ (trumpets) and despite goat with Scythian chanting, culminating in an her plangent protests, carry her off to be their orchestral orgy. cook. The transformed ‘wife’ dies, mourned by A stately oriental melody with glittering interlude meditations on the first buffoon’s accompaniment – the tuba hints at lurking theme and buried in a ritual which evokes brutality – finds the buffoons awaiting a rich that of Stravinsky’s ancestors in The Rite of merchant who has come to choose a bride from Spring without actually parodying it. The their seven daughters; the daughters spin like poor merchant is savagely mocked by the tops in a vivace nimbly launched by strings. thwarted buffoons, and there is militaristic uproar as the protagonist reappears as himself Arguably it was the limpid purity of Russia’s in the company of seven soldiers, stomping eastern rivers that found its way in to the his demands of compensation for his dead orchestration of the First Violin Concerto. ‘sister’. Then having authoritatively dismissed The river trip was a holiday that Prokofiev the the merchant in a heavy brass variation of careful Soviet autobiographer would be at his main motif, he flips back into clownish pains to pass over. A detour took him as far mood with a sprightly dance-tune on solo east as the foot of the Ural mountains, where violin, complemented by an even simpler ditty he described the scenery as ‘wild, virginal brightly proposed by the three clarinets; and so and exceptionally beautiful, with its red this often grotesquely-scored tale ends in a riot mountainous shores covered in dark Siberian of high spirits. pines’. The more aggressive vein he thought Diaghilev would want for his ballet score had A gentler mode frames the First Violin Concerto, made him ‘cool towards the lyricism of my surely that concertino theme of spring 1913. Violin Concerto’. So only its aggressive scherzo It was, however, against the background of took any kind of shape before the nature-idylls 1917’s February Revolution that work on the of 1917. Concerto finally blossomed. ‘How could it have happened that he did not hear the true music Years of displacement and uncertainty of the Revolution?’ asks Prokofiev’s dutiful intervened before the Concerto’s first Soviet biographer, Israel Nestyev.

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