Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C

1. Andante - Allegro (C major)
2. Tema con variazioni (E minor)
3. Allegro, ma non troppo (C major)

Prokofiev was above all a practical composer who rarely let an idea go to waste. While most of the themes used in his Third Piano Concerto were conceived for it, some were leftovers from abandoned projects - two themes that appear in the finale, for instance, began life as sketches for a string quartet. He noted down the first ideas in 1913 in Russia, but most of the work was done between 1917 and 1921. By this time he had fled Russia in the wake of the revolution and was based in Paris. Once he had amassed enough ideas, it was simply a matter of crafting them into a convincing whole.

In 1921, after debuts in Paris and London, Prokofiev spent most of the spring and summer in the village of St. Brevin-les-Pins in Brittany. Here he had for the first time since leaving Russia a sense of calm and happiness, and work progressed well on his current composition projects: his Opera The Fiery Angel, a collection of songs, and his Third Piano Concerto. His ballet The Love for Three Oranges was due to be performed in Chicago, as was the new concerto, and Diaghilev was planning to employ him for another ballet score. All in all his prospects looked good.

He discovered that another Russian emigre,the poet Konstantin Balmont, was living nearby. The acquaintance soon became a friendship and a creative partnership. Prokofiev wrote a song-cycle on his poems. Balmont, who had fallen on hard times and was immensely cheered to make Prokofiev’s acquaintance, wrote a sonnet in response to the new concerto after Prokofiev played parts of it through to him on the “horrible upright piano” (his wife’s description) on which he was composing it. Prokofiev returned the compliment by dedicating the concerto to the poet.

The premiere came in Chicago in December 1921. “My Third Concerto has turned out to be devilishly difficult, “ he wrote to his friend Serge Koussevitsky’s wife and secretary Natalia a few days before. “I’m nervous and I’m practising hard three hours a day.” The American critics received the new concerto positively if not wildly enthusiastically; the concerto began to attain the phenomenal popularity that it still enjoys only after European and Russian audiences had heard it.

Prokofiev was working hard to establish himself in the West as a soloist, and had made successful debuts in Paris and London. But there was competition in the form of another expatriate, Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is perhaps not too fanciful to imagine that the new concerto’s melodicism and simplicity was Prokofiev's attempt to take on Rachmaninoff on his own terms. (Meanwhile, Prokofiev's rising profile as a composer in America would similarly influence Rachmaninoff to adopt a more abrasive style in his later music.) “Let the maestro be calm”, he wrote to Koussevitzky, with whom he would often perform it. “This is not a Stravinsky symphony - there are no complicated meters, no dirty tricks. It can be conducted without special preparation - it is difficult for the orchestra, but not for the conductor.”