“The Concerto is not cyclic in the Franckian sense of developing several movements out of the theme or set of themes. Each movement has its own independent themes. But there is reference to some of the material of the First Movement in the Third; and also reference to the material of the Third Movement in the Finale. The piano part is treated in concertante fashion. The piano always has the leading part which is closely interwoven with significant music in the orchestra.”
After this rather mild and dispassionate self-appraisal, it comes as something of a shock to read the slashing commentary of Prokofieff’s Soviet biographer Nestyev:—
“The machine-like Toccata, in the athletic style of the earlier Prokofieff, presents his bold jumps, hand-crossing, and Scarlatti technic in highly exaggerated form. The tendency to wide skips à la Scarlatti is carried to monstrous extremes. Sheer feats of piano acrobatics completely dominate the principal movements of the Concerto. In the precipitate Toccata this dynamic quality degenerates into mere lifeless mechanical movement, with the result that the orchestra itself seems to be transformed into a huge mechanism with fly-wheels, pistons, and transmission belts.”
To Nestyev it was further proof of the “brittle, urbanistic” sterility of Prokofieff’s “bourgeois” wanderings.
VIOLIN CONCERTOS
Concerto in D major, No. 1, Opus 19, for Violin and Orchestra
Although composed in Russia between 1913 and 1917, Prokofieff’s First Violin Concerto did not see the light of day till October 18, 1923, that is to say, shortly after he had taken up residence in Paris. It was on that date that the work was first performed in the French capital at a concert conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, who entrusted the solo part to his concertmaster Marcel Darrieux. The same violinist was soloist at a subsequent concert in the Colonne concert series, on November 25. It is said that the work was assigned to a concertmaster after Mr. Koussevitzky had been rebuffed by several established artists, among them the celebrated Bronislaw Hubermann, who relished neither its idiom nor its technic. This attitude was shared by the Paris critics, who expressed an almost uniform hostility to the concerto. Prokofieff’s arrival in Paris had already been prepared by his “Scythian Suite” and Third Piano Concerto. The new work must evidently have struck Parisian ears as rather mild and Mendelssohnian by comparison. In any case, the Violin Concerto did not gain serious recognition till it was performed in Prague on June 1 of the following year at a festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. The soloist this time was Joseph Szigeti, and it was thanks in large part to his working sponsorship of the Concerto that it began to gather momentum on the international concert circuit. Serge Koussevitzky was again the conductor when the work was given its American premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 24, 1925, and once more the soloist was a concertmaster—Richard Burgin.
The D major Violin Concerto shows the period of its composition in its frequent traces of the national school of Rimsky-Korsakoff and Glazounoff. Despite the bustling intricacies of the second movement, it is not a virtuoso’s paradise by any means. Bravura of the rampant kind is absent, and of cadenzas there is no sign. Neither is the orchestra an accompaniment in the traditional sense, but rather part of the same integrated scheme of which the solo-violin is merely a prominent feature.
I. Andantino. The solo violin chants a gentle theme against which the strings and clarinet weave in equally gentle background. There is a spirited change of mood as the melody is followed by rhythmic passage-work sustained over a marked bass. The first theme returns as the movement draws to a close, more deliberate now. The flute takes it up as the violin embroiders richly around it.
II. Vivacissimo. This is a swiftly moving scherzo, bristling with accented rhythms, long leaps, double-stop slides and harmonics, and down-bow strokes, “none of which,” Robert Bagar shrewdly points out, “may be construed as display music.”