Chattanooga Symphony & Opera - Scheherazade - Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19

Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19

Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19
Sergei Prokofiev
(b. April 27, 1891, in southeast Ukraine; d. March 5, 1953, in Moscow)

Prokofiev’s father died in 1910 ending the regular support he had received from his family. He was very lucky to have built up a fine reputation that he parlayed into a publishing contract the next year. Even though he never went abroad until 1913, he was deep into dissonance. To this day many have an impression that Prokofiev wrote a lot of noisy music. Much of his music matching that description was written by 1913, for example, Sarcasms for piano and his second piano concerto, both from 1912. Modernists were thrilled and Prokofiev’s reputation soared, but in his soul was a deep Romantic streak. Violin Concerto No. 1 was the start of his reversion to form.

Prokofiev finished his concerto in 1917 and was scheduled to premiere in Petrograd (once and today St. Petersburg) the same year but with WWI and political unrest in Russia, the debut waited until 1923 in Paris. Three days later it was played for the first time in the Soviet Union by two remarkable teenagers, Nathan Milstein and Vladimir Horowitz, both 19. Milstein wrote in his memoirs, “I feel that if you have a great pianist like Horowitz playing with you, you don't need an orchestra.”

A first version of the concerto, called Concertino, began with a dreamy melody written during his affair with Nina Mescherskaya (1895-1981), a Russian poet and author. The melody became part of the concerto and, importantly, set a tone. The work reverses the typical layout of a concerto in three movements: slow, fast, slow.

Slow tempo notwithstanding the first movement follows sonata form. The violin’s lyrical line is the first theme, wandering high and low, gaining intensity. The second theme, marked narrante, is forceful: David Oistrakh remembers Prokofiev instructing him, “Play it as though you're trying to convince someone of something.” The movement ends dreamily with a flute figure, in Michael Steinberg’s words, “a quiet run of sixty-‑fourth-‑notes curling upward like a twist of scented smoke.”

The short second movement is a scherzo with virtuoso challenges for the soloist. Exuberant outer sections surround a march seemingly in perpetual motion.

The finale shares much with the first movement, opening serenely but gathering a head of steam. By the end tranquility is again the order of the day. Having the last word the flute again rises up like the smoke of incense.