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Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26, is a piano concerto by Sergei Prokofiev. It was completed in 1921 using sketches first started in 1913.
Prokofiev began his work on the concerto as early as 1913 when he wrote a theme with variations which he then set aside. Although he revisited the sketches in 1916–17, he did not fully devote himself to the project until 1921 when he was spending the summer in Brittany.
Prokofiev himself played the solo part at the premiere on 16 December 1921 in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frederick Stock. The work did not gain immediate popularity and had to wait until 1922 to be confirmed in the 20th century canon, after Serge Koussevitzky conducted a lavishly praised performance in Paris. The first Soviet performance was on 22 March 1925, by Samuil Feinberg, with the Orchestra of the Theatre of the Revolution under Konstantin Saradzhev. [1]
The concerto is scored for solo piano and orchestra with the following instrumentation.
The concerto consists of three movements of roughly equal length which last just under 30 minutes in total. [2]
The first movement opens with an andante clarinet solo, a long, lyrical melody that the whole orchestra eventually picks up and expands. The strings begin the allegro section with a scalar passage which seems to accelerate towards an upwards glissando climax, at which point the allegro entry of the solo piano unexpectedly breaks the lyrical mood in an exuberant, harmonically fluid burst of brilliance and rhythm, utilizing fragments of the first theme. Piano and orchestra continue in dialogue until the piano introduces the harmonic structure for the second theme with a loud, unexpected march-like climax.
The second theme, considerably more dissonant and ambiguous in tonality, is first taken by the orchestra, then expanded upon by the soloist. This leads into what is perhaps the most recognizable pianistic feat of the first movement: several lines of octaves interspersed with close tones either above or below (in a triplet rhythm), moving up and down the keyboard with the hands usually on top of one another. This is followed by a restatement of the opening clarinet theme, played loudly in the full orchestra, which transitions to a haunting variation of the theme by the solo piano. A quick, scalar passage from the movement's beginning is now taken up by the piano, in what is arguably the most difficult passage in the first movement for its challenges of fingering and phrasing.
This leads into an exact recapitulation of the piano's entrance, which now leads into a brilliant coda involving various figurations of the octave-triplet idea, as well as runs on the piano consisting entirely of ascending parallel triads and glissandi. The second theme is restated in the high register of the piano, first as blocked chords, then as frenetic sixteenth-note arpeggios. Several non-melodic scales allow the music to wind down to a quiet throb in the orchestra on a dissonant chord, C-A♭-D. The orchestra then resumes the pulsating low Cs; the piano makes a shortened restatement of the scalar passage that led to the recapitulation, which is now used to end the movement, with a dissonant harmony followed sarcastically by barely tonal open C octaves.
The middle movement (in E minor) is a theme and five variations.
The third movement, which Prokofiev himself called an "argument" [3] between soloist and orchestra, begins with an A-minor statement of the main theme in bassoons and pizzicato strings, interrupted by the piano's assertive entrance with a conflicting theme. Interplay between the piano and orchestra builds up steam, with a brief quickening of tempo (foreshadowing the lengthy Coda) before arriving at a slow, lyrical secondary theme (C♯ major/minor) in woodwinds. The piano offers a rather sarcastic reply, and the slow theme develops, through another Rachmaninoff-esque restatement and another ethereal exploration (the soloist running up and down the keyboard softly over gently dissonant muted woodwinds), into a united climax with piano and strings in unison, then fading into the Coda.
This is the most virtuosic section of the concerto, with an allegro restatement of the main theme, again in bassoons, but in E minor. The piano reframes it initially in D major, then slides into a bitonal obbligato against a G major underpinning in strings. Then the coda explodes into a musical battle between soloist and orchestra, with prominent piano ornamentation over the orchestra (including famously difficult double-note arpeggi, sometimes approximated by pianists with keyboard glissandos using the knuckles), eventually establishing the ending key of C major and finishing in a flourish with a fortissimo C tonic ninth chord.
There are more than 120 commercial recordings of this popular work. Prokofiev himself made the first in June 1932 with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Piero Coppola at Abbey Road Studios in London; it is the only recording that exists of the composer performing one of his concertos. Martha Argerich famously recorded the work in 1967 with Claudio Abbado for Deutsche Grammophon; she recorded it again in 1997 with Charles Dutoit for EMI, this time winning a Grammy Award. Evgeny Kissin has made three recordings: in 1985, when he was 13 years old, with conductor Andrei Tchistiakov for the Russian export label Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, released in the West on RCA; in 1993, live in Berlin, with Abbado for Deutsche Grammophon; and in 2008, live in London, with Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra for EMI, an effort that also garnered a Grammy Award. [4] Abbado's final recording of this piece is with pianist Yuja Wang at the Lucerne Festival in 2009. [5] Pianist Horacio Gutiérrez’s 1990 recording with Neeme Järvi and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra received acclaim upon its first release and again when reissued in 2009. [6] [7] But a survey of 70 recordings by International Piano Quarterly chose the 1996 live recording by Alexander Toradze with the Kirov Orchestra and Valery Gergiev as “Historically the Best On Record.” Other recordings have been made by Terence Judd, Julius Katchen, Lang Lang, Nikolai Lugansky, Van Cliburn, Mikhail Pletnev, Yefim Bronfman, Kun-Woo Paik and more recently Behzod Abduraimov.
The Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K. 331 / 300i, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a piano sonata in three movements.
The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, is a concertante work written by Sergei Rachmaninoff for piano and orchestra, closely resembling a piano concerto, all in a single movement. Rachmaninoff wrote the work at his summer home, the Villa Senar in Switzerland, according to the score, from 3 July to 18 August 1934. Rachmaninoff himself, a noted performer of his own works, played the piano part at the piece's premiere on 7 November 1934, at the Lyric Opera House in Baltimore, Maryland, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
The Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, by the German Romantic composer Robert Schumann was completed in 1845 and is the composer's only piano concerto. The complete work was premiered in Dresden on 4 December 1845. It is one of the most widely performed and recorded piano concertos from the Romantic period.
The Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 of Jean Sibelius, originally composed in 1904 and revised in 1905, is the only concerto by Sibelius. It is symphonic in scope and included an extended cadenza for the soloist that takes on the role of the development section in the first movement.
Concerto in F is a composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and orchestra which is closer in form to a traditional concerto than his earlier jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue. It was written in 1925 on a commission from the conductor and director Walter Damrosch. It is just under one hour and one half long.
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40, in Paris in 1924-25, during what he called "nine months of frenzied toil". He characterized this symphony as a work of "iron and steel".
Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53, known as the Waldstein, is one of the three most notable sonatas of his middle period. Completed in summer 1804 and surpassing Beethoven's previous piano sonatas in its scope, the Waldstein is a key early work of Beethoven's "Heroic" decade (1803–1812) and set a standard for piano composition in the grand manner.
Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, MWV O 14, is his last concerto. Well received at its premiere, it has remained among the most prominent and highly-regarded violin concertos. It holds a central place in the violin repertoire and has developed a reputation as an essential concerto for all aspiring concert violinists to master, and usually one of the first Romantic era concertos they learn. A typical performance lasts just under half an hour.
Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, was written in 1830–31, around the same time as his fourth symphony, and premiered in Munich on 17 October 1831. This concerto was composed in Rome during a travel in Italy after the composer met the pianist Delphine von Schauroth in Munich. The concerto was dedicated to her. Mendelssohn attended one party after another in Munich in October 1831, the month of the premiere, but he also played chamber music and taught double counterpoint. He performed the piece himself at the premiere, which also included performances of his Symphony No. 1 and the Overture from Midsummer Night's Dream. He had already written a piano concerto in A minor with string accompaniment (1822) and two concertos with two pianos (1823–24).
The Piano Concerto No. 4 in C minor, Op. 44 was composed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1875. It was premièred on October 31, 1875, at the Théâtre du Châtelet of Paris, with the composer as the soloist. The concerto is dedicated to Anton Door, a professor of piano at the Vienna Conservatory.
Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, in 1912 and completed it the next year. However, that version of the concerto is lost; the score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution. Prokofiev reconstructed the work in 1923, two years after finishing his Piano Concerto No. 3, and declared it to be "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered [Piano Concerto] No. 4." Indeed, its orchestration has features that clearly postdate the 1921 concerto. Performing as soloist, Prokofiev premiered this "No. 2" in Paris on 8 May 1924 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting. It is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April 1913 after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev.
The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, is a concerto composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for keyboard and orchestra. Mozart composed the concerto in the winter of 1785–1786, finishing it on 24 March 1786, three weeks after completing his Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major. As he intended to perform the work himself, Mozart did not write out the soloist's part in full. The premiere was in early April 1786 at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Chronologically, the work is the twentieth of Mozart's 23 original piano concertos.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102, by Dmitri Shostakovich was composed in 1957 for the 19th birthday of his son Maxim, who premiered the piece during his graduation concert at the Moscow Conservatory. It contains many similar elements to Shostakovich's Concertino for Two Pianos: both works were written to be accessible for developing young pianists. It is an uncharacteristically cheerful piece, much more so than most of Shostakovich's works.
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The Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, Op. 20, is an early work of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915). Written in 1896, when he was 24, it was his first work for orchestra and the only concerto he composed. Scriabin completed the concerto in only a few days in the fall of 1896, but did not finish the orchestration until the following May. Belyayev paid the composer 600 rubles ; it premiered in October 1897 and was finally published in 1898.
The Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60, completed by Johannes Brahms in 1875, is scored for piano, violin, viola and cello. It is sometimes called the Werther Quartet after Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. The premiere took place in Vienna on November 18, 1875, to an anxious public. Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima were in attendance.
The Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, was composed by Johannes Brahms between 1856 and 1861. It was premiered in 1861 in Hamburg, with Clara Schumann at the piano. It was also played in Vienna on 16 November 1862, with Brahms himself at the piano supported by members of the Hellmesberger Quartet. Like most piano quartets, it is scored for piano, violin, viola, and cello.
The Twelve Grand Concertos, Op. 6, HWV 319–330, by George Frideric Handel are concerti grossi for a concertino trio of two violins and cello and a ripieno four-part string orchestra with harpsichord continuo. First published by subscription in London by John Walsh in 1739, they became in a second edition two years later Handel's Opus 6. Taking the older concerto da chiesa and concerto da camera of Arcangelo Corelli as models, rather than the later three-movement Venetian concerto of Antonio Vivaldi favoured by Johann Sebastian Bach, they were written to be played during performances of Handel's oratorios and odes. Despite the conventional model, Handel incorporated in the movements the full range of his compositional styles, including trio sonatas, operatic arias, French overtures, Italian sinfonias, airs, fugues, themes and variations and a variety of dances. The concertos were largely composed of new material: they are amongst the finest examples in the genre of baroque concerto grosso.
The Musette, or rather chaconne, in this Concerto, was always in favour with the composer himself, as well as the public; for I well remember that HANDEL frequently introduced it between the parts of his Oratorios, both before and after publication. Indeed no instrumental composition that I have ever heard during the long favour of this, seemed to me more grateful and pleasing, particularly, in subject.
The Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, for cello and orchestra was the closest Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ever came to writing a full concerto for cello and orchestra. The style was inspired by Mozart, Tchaikovsky's role model, and makes it clear that Tchaikovsky admired the Classical style very much. However, the Theme is not Rococo in origin, but actually an original theme in the Rococo style.
The Piano Concerto, Op. 40, is a work for piano and orchestra completed by Airat Ichmouratov between 2012 and 2013. Composition remained untouched for a span of ten years until the composer crossed paths with a soloist, Montreal-based pianist Jean-Philippe Sylvestre. Sylvestre's keen enthusiasm for performing the concerto, coupled with his ability to "do it justice and add finishing touches," as described by the composer, led to the revival of the piece. The Piano Concerto was recorded by Chandos on April 19–20, 2022, at St. Luke's in London, with Jean-Philippe Sylvestre as the soloist and the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer. Its first public performance took place on May 1, 2024, at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City, with Sylvestre as the soloist, accompanied by the Quebec Symphony Orchestra under Ichmouratov.
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