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COMMENTARY

We tend to play a lot of Prokofiev — WHY? A couple of important reasons come to mind:

     1)     He generally calls for large orchestras with comprehensive percussion sections, which keeps our percussionists busy back there.

     2)     His music is both accessible to the general public and rewarding and demanding for players, making for a win-win combination.

I think it quite important for all musicians to be aware of Prokofiev’s own analysis of his style characteristics. Here was a composer who was not afraid to analyze his own music and his attitudes towards his art. According to the composer, there were five major characteristics of his works that were either completely overlooked or misunderstood by his critics:

“The first”, he said, “was the classical, born in my childhood when I heard my mother play Beethoven sonatas.  It took a neoclassical turn in my gavottes and sonatas.

The second — innovation, which started after Taneyev’s (his teacher) mocking remark about my ‘much too simple’ harmony.  At first it led to a search for harmonies to suit my own language, and later to a search for a language to express strong emotions.

The third — toccata-like character, or if you prefer to call it so, machine, or motorlike.  This had its roots in Schumann’s Toccata, which made a great impression on me at the time and is expressed in my Etudes, Toccata, Scherzo, and in the Scherzo in the Second Piano Concerto.  This characteristic is of less importance.

The fourth — a lyrical principal.  This characteristic was never noticed, or not until much later.  For a long time, my critics denied me any lyricism, and without any encouragement it developed very slowly.  But later I paid more attention to it.

The fifth — the so-called grotesque, is a sideline of the four.  In fact, I am very much against this term ‘grotesque’, which in Russian is a mistranslation of the original French word.  In referring to my work I would prefer to use ‘scherzando’, meaning simply an effort to express a joke, laughter, or mockery.”

Thus Prokofiev on his own style characteristics.  Can you find examples of these characteristics in the Prokofiev works we are playing this year?  Easy!  You can find them ALL in the Three Oranges Suite!

prokofiev at the podium

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