Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 –1893

Sergei Prokofiev 1891 –1953 Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, op.16 1 I Andantino – Allegretto 11.41 2 II Scherzo: Vivace 2.27 3 III Intermezzo: Allegro moderato 6.07 4 IV Finale: Allegro tempestoso 11.38 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 –1893 Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, op.23 5 I Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso – Allegro con spirito 21.20 6 II Andantino semplice – Prestissimo – Tempo I 6.48 7 III Allegro con fuoco 6.53 67.05 Beatrice Rana piano Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Antonio Pappano conductor 3 Putting a personal stamp on one’s interpretation of a piece, once and for all, is the ultimate goal of every musician – no matter how unattainable it might seem. Recording, however, not only gives us the chance to set down a milestone in our own artistic journey, but also serves as a testament to the new ideas born from a special encounter between musicians. This collaboration with Maestro Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia has been one of the most special of my career to date, and I feel lucky and honoured to have had the opportunity to capture it on record with my debut album for Warner Classics. The repertoire of this recording consists of the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.2 and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1, two great masterpieces of the Russian literature which are very dear to me: two very different works, united nonetheless by their astonishing dramatic power and a revolutionary character that was scandalous for the time of composition. Beatrice Rana Beatrice Rana is a revelation to me as her level of musical maturity and technical confidence are astounding in one so young. Though it is true in today’s world that the new-wunderkind-on-the-block is a major preoccupation, I believe that Beatrice is here to stay. She is a fine musician and has innate good taste. She took remarkably to the recording process and never flagged, even with such a demanding programme and a persistent conductor! It is my sincere hope that this recording will spur audiences to perk up their ears and search her out in the concert halls of the world. Antonio Pappano Sergei Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, op.16 By the time the thirteen-year-old Sergei Prokofiev entered the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1904, he already had two operas, a symphony, a violin sonata, and many solo piano pieces behind him. Bored with the school’s conservative curriculum, he set himself up as a rebel. Anti-Romanticism was in the air, with modernists like Bartók and Stravinsky beginning to make their mark. The notion of a piano as a “singing” instrument in the tradition of Chopin, Liszt and, indeed, Tchaikovsky, flew out the window in the face of Prokofiev’s hard-hitting keyboard writing, rhythmic propulsion and emotional detachment. After all, Prokofiev insisted, the piano was a percussive instrument. The composer’s brief First Concerto both excited and enraged critics and helped establish his reputation as an enfant terrible . In 1912, while still a student, Prokofiev embarked on a second, more extensive concerto. Its September 1913 premiere (with the composer at the piano) also made a sharply mixed yet vivid impact. However, in 1918, Prokofiev left the full orchestral manuscript score in his Petrograd apartment while on tour in the United States. He later discovered that the tenants in his apartment had used the manuscript as fuel “to cook an omelet”, as friends later explained. Undaunted, Prokofiev reconstructed the entire concerto from memory in 1923. In his autobiography, the composer claimed to have made “the contrapuntal development slightly more complicated, the form more graceful – less square”, and mentioned improving both solo piano and orchestral parts. He introduced the “new” Second Concerto in Paris on 8 May 1924, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. The Second is the longest and arguably most difficult of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos from both technical and musical perspectives and did not enter the international repertoire quickly. Prokofiev may have come to harbour ambivalence about the work. A BBC performance under Ansermet apparently 4 found the composer’s normally assured fingers struggling, while Vladimir Horowitz claimed that Prokofiev told him not to play the concerto “because I don’t like it”. Yet time lends perspective, and it’s clear that the Second Concerto contains some of Prokofiev’s most daring, dramatic and innovative ideas. In addition to a full complement of strings, winds and brass, the large orchestra requires a wide array of percussion instruments. Strings and clarinet establish the key of G minor, setting the stage for the piano’s soaring theme accompanied by steady left hand triplets and lush orchestral textures. The caustic, sharp-edged second subject is in the adjacent key of A minor, a novel departure from typical key relationships. Both themes jostle for attention in elaborated fashion throughout one of the concerto literature’s longest and most taxing cadenzas. The darkly effervescent and harmonically restless Scherzo’s motoric momentum and rapid soloist–orchestral interplay may sound “typically” Prokofievian, yet a hint of a French accent informs the chattering woodwind writing and brief respites of plain tonality that foreshadow composers like Poulenc and Françaix. Throughout the Scherzo’s 187 bars, incidentally, the pianist only plays in octaves. From its hard-hitting and snarling accented crotchets (quarter notes) to its slithering descending triplet lines and whimsical yet elaborately wrought embellishments, the Intermezzo’s grotesque, phantasmagorical aura leads one to wonder if Prokofiev had studied Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, especially its two “Nachtmusik” movements. Perhaps Allegro tempestoso is too modest an indication for the Finale opening’s onslaught, with its leaping, widely spaced intervals. The music slows down for a piano solo that some commentators liken to the main first-movement theme of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto. To this writer’s ears, Rachmaninov rewritten by Satie seems more apt an analogy, even if the Più mosso’s churning sequences with repeated chords may have sneaked out of the D minor Concerto’s finale for a fleeting cameo, or two. Yet the galvanizing coda, with its deceptive dynamic shifts and ungeneric landing plan approaching the final peroration is nothing less than Prokofiev operating at full capacity. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, op.23 On Christmas Eve 1874, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky showed his new Piano Concerto in B flat minor to pianist and Moscow Conservatory director Nikolai Rubinstein. He hoped Rubinstein would champion the work, and sought advice on the piano writing. Instead, Rubinstein tore into Tchaikovsky. “It appeared that my concerto was worthless, that it was unplayable, that passages were trite, awkward, and so clumsy that it was impossible to put them right”, the composer wrote to his patron Nadezhda von Meck in 1878. Rubinstein nevertheless offered to premiere the piece once Tchaikovsky revised the concerto to suit his demands. Tchaikovsky famously replied, “I won’t change a single note, and I’ll publish it just as it is now”. Happily, over time Rubinstein changed his mind and became one of the work’s leading exponents. Its successful premiere took place in Boston on 25 October 1875 with its dedicatee Hans van Bülow as soloist. Von Bülow’s passionate yet rigorous playing style had impressed Tchaikovsky in an 1874 Moscow recital, while Von Bülow, in turn, admired Tchaikovsky’s music. With its virtuosic panache, unabashed lyricism and stirring melodic invention, “Tchaik One” continues to be a perennial concert staple, as well as an indispensable repertoire benchmark and calling card for pianists all over the world. The first movement’s introductory theme needs no introduction, so to speak, in that it has long been embraced by pop culture, from Freddy Martin’s 1940s hit “Tonight We Love” to a disco version ushering in the first episode of the American TV show Late Night with David Letterman . Tchaikovsky himself was not averse to appropriating popular tunes; in a letter to Von Meck in 1879 he wrote that a song he heard sung by blind beggars in a Ukrainian market provided inspiration for the sprightly Allegro con spirito theme introduced 5 by the piano. Similarly, the second movement’s central Prestissimo episode borrows from a French chanson that Tchaikovsky and his brothers enjoyed singing, “Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire”, while the second theme in the final section of the third movement derives from the folk song “Podoydi, podoydi vo Tsar-Gorod”. Piano and woodwinds toss the opening theme back and forth in playful discourse, followed by a wistful second theme stated by the clarinet. The violins answer with their own lyrical rejoinder, which combines with the main theme’s snapping motif in a development section, culminating in a short cadenza that starts with those celebrated fortissimo descending octaves, leading into a contrasting introspective episode. The recapitulation brings back the exposition’s themes and leads into a more extended cadenza prior to the coda. Solo flute and pizzicato strings set a delicate chamber-like atmosphere for the Andantino semplice’s disarming theme to float. The piano takes up the theme, embellishes it, pulls back to accompany the horn, oboe and bassoon, and provides a sustained staccato backing for the cello’s thematic turn. The music suddenly breaks into a quicksilver and almost balletic Prestissimo, and then returns to the movement’s languid point or origin. Although the third movement’s rhythmic swagger and arching melodic impetus define the Romantic concerto bravura finale, its volatile emotional contrasts and unpredictable accents not only hold listeners’ attention beyond the music’s surface brilliance, but also remind one of Tchaikovsky’s supreme operatic and balletic mastery.

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