Post by erik on Jun 18, 2022 12:28:46 GMT -5
One of the last works that Sergei Prokofiev ever composed is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight.
Prokofiev: SINFONIA CONCERTANTE FOR CELLO AND ORCHESTRA IN E MINOR, OP. 125
The last eight years in the life of Sergei Prokofiev were not really happy ones. Although his Fifth Symphony, composed to celebrate his home country’s victory in World War II, was hugely popular, the much grimmer Sixth Symphony that followed in 1946, and which put a much darker spin on the costs to Mother Russia, made him a target of Joseph Stalin’s wrath via the infamous Zhdanov affair, which tried to purge Russian music of “Western” tendencies. One of his final works was what he termed a “Sinfonia Concertante” for cello and orchestra that he composed with a young Russian cellist named Mstislav Rostropovich. It was basically a way of righting what he saw as the wrongs of a previous actual cello concerto that he had composed in the early 1930’s when he was living in the West. The work, which has remained in the shadow of Dvorak’s and Elgar’s far better known cello concertos, and even Tchaikovsky’s Variations On A Rococo Theme, is a notoriously difficult work lasting thirty-eight minutes that is still not played as often as it should be. The composer revisited the work a number of times between mid-1950 and the start of 1953, and had it definitively completed that February. But on March 5, 1953, Prokofiev passed away at the age of 62; and adding insult to injury, his death didn’t trigger nearly the same wave of mourning that there was for another figure who died in Moscow that same day, namely Joseph Stalin. Fortunately, Rostropovich did give the work its premiere in Copenhagen in December 1954, and thus had encouraged Prokofiev’s younger fellow Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich to compose his own pair of cello concertos, in 1959 and 1966 respectively.
Cello: HEINRICH SCHIFF
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ANDRE PREVIN (Philips)
Included (2 CD Set):
SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN C SHARP MINOR, OP. 131 (YOUTH)
Prokofiev: SINFONIA CONCERTANTE FOR CELLO AND ORCHESTRA IN E MINOR, OP. 125
The last eight years in the life of Sergei Prokofiev were not really happy ones. Although his Fifth Symphony, composed to celebrate his home country’s victory in World War II, was hugely popular, the much grimmer Sixth Symphony that followed in 1946, and which put a much darker spin on the costs to Mother Russia, made him a target of Joseph Stalin’s wrath via the infamous Zhdanov affair, which tried to purge Russian music of “Western” tendencies. One of his final works was what he termed a “Sinfonia Concertante” for cello and orchestra that he composed with a young Russian cellist named Mstislav Rostropovich. It was basically a way of righting what he saw as the wrongs of a previous actual cello concerto that he had composed in the early 1930’s when he was living in the West. The work, which has remained in the shadow of Dvorak’s and Elgar’s far better known cello concertos, and even Tchaikovsky’s Variations On A Rococo Theme, is a notoriously difficult work lasting thirty-eight minutes that is still not played as often as it should be. The composer revisited the work a number of times between mid-1950 and the start of 1953, and had it definitively completed that February. But on March 5, 1953, Prokofiev passed away at the age of 62; and adding insult to injury, his death didn’t trigger nearly the same wave of mourning that there was for another figure who died in Moscow that same day, namely Joseph Stalin. Fortunately, Rostropovich did give the work its premiere in Copenhagen in December 1954, and thus had encouraged Prokofiev’s younger fellow Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich to compose his own pair of cello concertos, in 1959 and 1966 respectively.
Cello: HEINRICH SCHIFF
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ANDRE PREVIN (Philips)
Included (2 CD Set):
SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN C SHARP MINOR, OP. 131 (YOUTH)