Prokofiev Piano concerto no 2 op 16

 Day 7

Prokofiev Piano concerto no 2 in G minor op 16

Vladimir Ashkenazy

London Symphony Orchestra

André Previn

Today's choice was suggested by the conductor Mark Prescott during a discussion in the interval of our rehearsal last night of the Enigma Variations.

I don't have much experience of Prokofiev. I've played most of the obvious pieces - the Classical symphony, Peter and the Wolf, Lieutenant Kije and the suite from Romeo and Juliet but that's about it. I've not listened to much of his music either. I know the 1st and 3rd piano concertos and the 5th symphony but that is about it. So the second concerto was completely new to me.

It has the reputation of being one of the most difficult concertos in the repertory. The piano writing is unbelievably complex in places and clearly the composer was trying to push what was possible to its absolute limit. Indeed although Prokofiev was a virtuoso pianist it clearly stretched his technique and there are reports that he messed up a performance in the 1930s when playing the concerto with Ansermet and the BBC symphony orchestra.  So it was certainly worth hearing, and following the score, to see just how many contortions the soloist is put through.

But in purely musical terms I must confess that I didn't find it a gripping piece - indeed  I did the unforgivable more than once and looked to the end of the score to see how many pages were left! At times it seems little more than note spinning with no real substance. I'd make an exception for the second movement - a scherzo perpetuum mobile which was fun: it must be an absolute nightmare to keep orchestra and soloist together in a movement which never lets up.  The very end of the concerto is also curiously underwhelming - you expect a big climax but it just stops with a single note played by only half of the orchestra.

A conductor friend of mine years ago told me that he thought that Prokofiev was a lazy orchestrator. There are pages with almost no dynamic or articulation markings. This can be effective in places but it does sometimes get rather heavy handed and unsubtle.

So not a piece that I am likely to go back to. But the whole point of this project is to widen my experience by listening to pieces that I have not heard before - I am not expecting to fall in love with each and every one of them!