“There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major.” -- Sergei Prokofiev

CONCERTO: A composition that features one or more “solo” instruments with orchestral accompaniment. The form of the concerto has developed and evolved over the course of music history.

FURTHER LISTENING:

Prokofiev: Symphony No. 1 in D Major (“Classical”)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat

Program note

Alas, poor C major.

The C major scale on a piano is all white keys. It is chromatically vanilla, seen as a neutral “easy” key because it’s easy to play in this key on a piano. Famous composers like the Frenchman Claude Debussy and the Austrian Arnold Schoenberg both made conscious efforts to write in other keys and tonalities during their careers to “break” with tradition.

The Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was not one of those composers. A renowned pianist himself, he composed sonatas, concertos, and symphonies in C, though his own harmonic language necessarily added more “black keys” into the music than more traditional composers.

Prokofiev once wrote: “I like my music the way I like my coffee: a little bitter, a little sweet, and always hot.” His third piano concerto illustrates this well. It begins with sweetness, a clarinet singing out a melancholy introduction. Soon, the orchestra enters with a sense of curiosity before strings begin racing, and the piano leaps in with a fiery, bravura passage. Prokofiev uses frequent dissonances, or notes and chords not typically found in a simple key, to give his music a sort of spiky feeling — this first movement explores a variety of moods and feelings, but there’s just a hint of causticity at all times.

The second movement is a theme and variations on a melody based on an old-fashioned French dance: the gavotte, a sort of slow, prancing step. The orchestra introduces the main theme, and the first variation is the piano entering with a trill to restate the theme with new, creative harmonies. Even though the mood and style change with each successive variation, the shape of the melody remains — sharp-eared listeners will be able to track it in different instruments.

For the finale, Prokofiev sets the piano against the orchestra in an argument, with both sides chiming in and cutting each other off in a waltz-like, whirling affair. The composer describes the music himself: “With a reduction of tone and slackening of tempo, an alternative theme is introduced in the woodwinds. The piano replies with a theme that is more in keeping with the caustic humor of the work. This is developed, and there is a brilliant finish.”

Prokofiev wrote this concerto ahead of a trip to America as a vehicle to perform himself to help earn a living. He wasn’t the only Russian making a name playing self-composed piano concertos — Rachmaninoff was in the States as well, and his more traditional, Romantic harmonies seemed to find more favor with U.S. listeners. Prokofiev, ever sardonic, had this to say: “I am sometimes a little surprised to find that my music is considered to be avant-garde. I thought I was just writing music that was not boring.”

(c) Jeremy Reynolds