Sergei Prokofiev
Violin Concerto No. 2
Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev's career traced a path that was irrevocably
intertwined with the changing fortunes of his native Russia. Born in 1891 during
the last years of the Tsars, he rose to fame early as a precocious "bad boy"
of the avant-garde. He left Russia for America and Europe as his country
struggled through revolution, and finally returned to his homeland seen first as
a prodigal, later as an example of western decadence. Yet no matter how he was
labeled, his music remained unmistakably his: energetic, harmonically
challenging, lyrical, and dramatic.
Prokofiev was born in the village of Sontsovka in the Ukraine, an adored only
child after the early deaths of his older sisters. Admitted (with youthful
portfolio of sonatas, symphonies, and operas) at age thirteen to the St.
Petersburg Conservatory, he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and Tcherepnin. His
self-assured intellect didn't always win friends: he kept statistics on the
number of mistakes each member of a harmony class made until one of them, he
writes, "jumped on me, threw me to the floor, and pulled my ears."
His early works were equally blunt: the novel dissonances and energetic
percussiveness of his pieces set him firmly in the ranks of the "futurists."
He left the conservatory in 1914 after winning the Rubinstein Prize, having
calculated that by playing his fiery Concerto No. 1 for piano in the
competition, "my [piece] might impress the examiners by the novelty of
technique; they simply would not be able to judge whether I was playing it well
or not!"
His tours to Europe from 1914 to 1918 connected him with Russian expatriates
such as the composer Igor Stravinsky and ballet impressario Sergey Diaghilev,
for whom he wrote several ballets. A year after the Bolsheviks took power,
Prokofiev received permission to travel to America, then Paris, where he lived
and worked during the '20s and early '30s. He composed over sixty works
during this period, varying from theatrical pieces to concert works. He
categorized his style at this time as containing four "basic lines:"
"The first was the classical line, which could be traced back to my early
childhood and the Beethoven sonatas I heard my mother play (…the Classical
Symphony [1916-17]…). The second line, the modern
trend...took the form of a search for my own harmonic language, developing later
into a search for a language in which to express powerful emotions (…Scythian
Suite [1915], The Gambler [opera, 1928], the Second Symphony [1924])
… The third line is the toccata, or the ‘motor', line traceable
perhaps to Schumann's Toccata which made such a powerful impression on
me (Etudes, Op. 2, [1909], the Scherzo of the Second
Symphony, the repetitive intensity of the melodic figures in the Pas d'Acier
[ballet, 1925–6]) … The fourth line is lyrical: it appears first
as a thoughtful and meditative mood … sometimes partly contained in the long
melody (…the beginning of the First Violin concerto [1911], Old
Grandmother's Tales [1912])."
As a brash young composer in Russia he found himself praised or reviled as a
modernist; in America and France he was more often seen as a representative of
the Russia he had left behind. By the time he wrote The Prodigal Son
(1929), the perhaps self-referential subject matter betrayed the composer's
homesickness. After several years of visits to his homeland, in 1936 he returned
with his family to Russia to stay. He was, indeed, hailed as a prodigal son at
first. This period produced some of his best-known work, including the ballet Romeo
and Juliet (1935) and Peter and the Wolf (1936).
But as the iron grip of Stalin tightened, the apolitical Prokofiev found that
his works must please the proletariat — as defined, of course, by the
Politburo. He strove to continue writing his own idiosyncratic compositions, and
was often successful (the film score Alexander Nevsky (1939), the ballet Cinderella
(1945), his Fifth and Sixth symphonies). But by the end of his life he found
that what was once thought "modern" could now be periodically denounced as
bourgeois "formalism." His American-born wife was deported; he found himself
writing music for events such as the opening of a canal. He died rewriting
portions of his ballet The Stone Flower to please officials of the
Bolshoi, on March 5, 1953 — the same day Stalin died.
The Violin Concerto No. 2, in G minor, was the last work he composed before
his final return to Russia. Written while Prokofiev was on tour, it was
commissioned for the French violinist Robert Soetens, who premiered the piece in
Madrid, 1935. It had been eighteen years since his first violin concerto, but
the two works share a similar singing lyricism coupled with virtuoso
passagework. The second, however, is more meditative at the beginning, more
explosive at the end. There are echoes of both the romantic melodies and the
brash peasant dance tunes from the composer's Romeo and Juliet, written
around the same time.
The Allegro moderato begins with a longing solo from the violin
answered by the lower strings, then followed rather quickly by some brilliant
passages with Prokofiev's signature tonal shifts and modulations. Out of this
grows the second theme, soulful and "one of the mature Prokofiev's most
felicitous melodic revelations" (Israel Nestyev, Prokofiev's Russian
biographer). The horn and then the oboe echo the theme as the violin solo takes
flight, shortly bringing the string section along with it. The two melodic
themes alternate and weave in and out of colorful brisk passages, until
Prokofiev merges the two themes together in the recapitulation. The movement
ends in a meditative mood, the horns sounding a muted call against the pizzicato
of the strings.
The Andante assai of the second movement continues in something of the
same mood, with strings now in plucked counterpoint to the solo's smooth line.
But the effect here is stately, following Prokofiev‘s "classical line" in
its echo of earlier composers. The movement develops in the classical manner as
well, with its theme and variation technique and interweaving melodic lines,
such as the counter melody introduced by the clarinet and flute. Lyric lines and
solo passages ebb and swell until the strings repeat their original
counterpoint, but now in vigorous sustained tones. The soloist soars into a duet
with the violin section, leading them into an energetic passage and then
following the woodwinds into the second theme and variations (Allegretto),
reminiscent of the flowing, dancing themes of Romeo and Juliet. Drums,
bass strings, and bassoon announce a shift in mood back to the original theme.
The movement ends as it began, with a stately pizzicato resolving to the quiet,
sustained notes of the lowest strings and brass.
After so much restraint, Prokofiev breaks into his stormy self in the last
movement. With a firm, pulsing beat the violin pulls the orchestra into an
energetic dance, whirling like a dervish at times over the triplet rhythm. A
lyrical, somewhat sad second theme makes a brief appearance, but the dance holds
sway again. The percussion supplies spice with triangle or castanet, the
clarinet sounds a liquid nightingale call, and the violin segues into a new,
agitated theme. This theme, and a recapitulation of the second, alternate with
the pervasive dance, as if the orchestra simply cannot escape its beat.
Woodwinds and brass descend in a cascade of notes and the solo suddenly takes
violent flight with no accompaniment other than insistent drumming. The string
section leaps in for a final flourish, then the movement ends in a flurry of
plucked strings and the thump of drums.
November 11, 1999
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