Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season January-February 2018 | Page 35

Heartened by this enthusiasm, Prokofiev spent the summer of 1921 completing his Third Piano Concerto. The piece had a long gestation period, with some of its ideas dating back as far as 1911. It grew into a work of remarkable power, containing all five elements Prokofiev listed in his autobiography as characteristics of his music: the “classical,” the “modernistic,” the “dynamic,” the “lyrical” and the “humorous.” This concerto is one of the great tests of a pianist’s technical virtuosity. “My Third Concerto has turned out to be devilishly difficult. I’m nervous and I’m practicing hard three hours a day,” he wrote before the Chicago premiere. To his surprise, the work drew only a lukewarm response in an America still uncomfortable with modern music. But audiences in Europe loved it, and soon Prokofiev moved to Paris, ruefully acknowledging that the U.S. wasn’t ready for him. In creating a bravura work for piano, Prokofiev did not slight the orchestra. Its colorful writing is nearly equally demanding, and its pungent woodwinds and soaring strings add a characteristically Prokofievian blend of irony and romance. This is a concerto without a true slow movement; instead, the composer weaves slower, more lyrical episodes into all three movements. The first movement opens with a slow introduction in which solo clarinet, then two clarinets, sing a melancholy Russian melody. Then the orchestra swings into a fast tempo, and the piano presents the brilliant, twisting principal theme. Even more exotic is the second theme, sung by the oboe above clattering castanets and featuring crisp, percussive writing for the piano. On its later return, this second theme will become harsher, almost grotesque, with thick piano chords topped by a shrieking piccolo. Midway through, the tempo returns to a slower Andante as the piano rhapsodizes over the opening Russian theme. In the second movement, a droll dance theme in the woodwinds over a march beat in the strings forms the basis of 41 st A NNUAL DECOR ATOR S’ SHOW HOUSE Pr esented by The Baltimor e Symphony Associates COMING THIS S PR I N G www.facebook.com/BSDSH JA N – F E B 2018 / OV E R T U R E 33