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".[citation needed] He characterized this symphony as a work of "iron and steel".[citation needed]
Prokofiev modeled the symphony's structure on Ludwig van Beethoven's last piano sonata (Op. 111): a tempestuous minor-key first movement followed by a set of variations. The first movement, in traditional sonata form, is rhythmically unrelenting, harmonically dissonant, and texturally thick. The second movement, twice as long as the first, comprises a set of variations on a plaintive, diatonic theme played on the oboe, which provides strong contrast to the defiant coda of the first movement. The subsequent variations contrast moments of beautiful meditation with cheeky playfulness, yet the tension of the first movement is never far away and contributes an ongoing sense of unease. The last variation integrates the theme with the violence of the first movement, reaching an inevitable climax. The symphony ends with a touching restatement of the initial oboe theme, eventually dispelled by an eerie chord on the strings.[1]
Premiere and public reaction
The piece was premiered in Paris on June 6, 1925, conducted by its dedicatee Serge Koussevitzky, and was not well received. After the premiere, Prokofiev commented that neither he nor the audience understood the piece. In a letter to Nikolai Myaskovsky, Prokofiev wrote:
I have made the music so complex to such an extent that when I listen to it myself I do not fathom its essence, so what can I ask of others?[citation needed]
Prokofiev later said that this symphony led him to have doubts about his ability as a composer for the first time in his life.[2]
Prokofiev intended to reconstruct the piece in three movements, going so far as to assign the project the opus number 136,[3] but the composer died before he could undertake the revisions. The symphony, little-known and rarely performed, remains among the least-played of Prokofiev's works.[citation needed] Despite the negative criticism, the contemporary composer Christopher Rouse called it "the best of all of them" in regards to Prokofiev's work, and composed his own Symphony No. 3 in homage to the piece.[4]
↑ Prokofiev, Sergei. "quoted in: Prokofiev Biography: America and Europe". prokofiev.org. Archived from the original on 2007-06-10. Retrieved 2007-06-21. Neither I nor the audience understood anything in it. It was too thickly woven. There were too many layers of counterpoint which degenerated into mere figuration... This was perhaps the first time it appeared to me that I might be destined to be a second-rate composer.
↑ "List of projected compositions." Sergey Prokofiev / Daniel Jaffé. London; New York: Phaidon Press, 2008. pp. 211-212.
The Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 by Johannes Brahms is the last of his symphonies. Brahms began working on the piece in Mürzzuschlag, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1884, just a year after completing his Symphony No. 3. Brahms conducted the Court Orchestra in Meiningen, Germany, for the work's premiere on 25 October 1885.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30, was composed in the summer of 1909. The piece was premiered on November 28 of that year in New York City with the composer as soloist, accompanied by the New York Symphony Society under Walter Damrosch. The work has the reputation of being one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical piano repertoire.
The Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39, is a four-movement work for orchestra written from 1898 to 1899 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
The Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1924–1925, and first performed in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Nicolai Malko on 12 May 1926. Shostakovich wrote the work as his graduation piece at the Petrograd Conservatory, completing it at the age of 19.
The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54 by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1939, and first performed in Leningrad on November 5, 1939 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky.
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 44, in 1928.
Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4 is actually two works, both using material created for The Prodigal Son ballet. The first, Op. 47, was completed in 1930 and premiered that November; it lasts about 22 minutes. The second, Op. 112, is too different to be termed a "revision"; made in 1947, it is about 37 minutes long, differs stylistically from the earlier work, reflecting a new context, and differs formally as well in its grander instrumentation.
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100, in the Soviet Union in one month in the summer of 1944.
The Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, also known as the Classical, was Sergei Prokofiev's first numbered symphony. He began to compose it in 1916 and completed it on September 10, 1917. It was composed as a modern reinterpretation of the classical style of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The symphony's nickname was bestowed upon it by the composer. It premiered on April 18, 1918, in Petrograd, conducted by Prokofiev. It has remained one of his most popular works.
Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto in E minor, Op. 125 is a large-scale work for cello and orchestra.
Sergei Prokofiev began his Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, as a concertino in 1915 but soon abandoned it to work on his opera The Gambler. He returned to the concerto in the summer of 1917. It was premiered on October 18, 1923 at the Paris Opera with Marcel Darrieux playing the violin part and the Paris Opera Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. Igor Stravinsky made his debut as conductor at the same concert, conducting the first performance of his own Octet for Wind Instruments.
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 Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63, written in 1935 by Sergei Prokofiev, is a work in three movements:
Allegro moderato
Andante assai
Allegro, ben marcato
Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 7 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, was completed in 1952, the year before his death. It is his last symphony.
The last complete piano concerto by Sergei Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 5 in G major, Op. 55, dates from 1932.
The Symphony No. 2 in E minor and C major by Arnold Bax was completed in 1926, after he had worked on it for two years. It was dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky, who conducted the first two performances of the work on 13 and 14 December 1929.
The Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 58 is a concerto written by Sergey Prokofiev between 1933 and 1938. Its duration is approximately 35 minutes. It consists of three movements:
The Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 9 is a composition by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.
Symphony No. 3 is an orchestral composition in two movements by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was jointly commissioned by the St. Louis Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. It was completed February 3, 2011 and premiered May 5, 2011 by the Saint Louis Symphony under David Robertson at Powell Hall in St. Louis, Missouri. The piece is dedicated to Rouse's high school music teacher, John Merrill.
The bassoon repertoire consists of pieces of music composed for bassoon as a principal instrument that may be performed with or without other instruments. Below is a non-exhaustive list of major works for the bassoon.
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