Shostakovich cracks me up in his inspired ending to the first piano concerto, anyway, even if he wasn't smiling when he did it.
Sorry to hear of a toothless performance of Prokofiev's second piano concerto. Sounds like a failure to emphasize the strangeness of things. I really love the alien bits in his music, like the piano take-off in the variations of the third concerto, where suddenly the pianist is walking around on the ceiling. I keep having a hard time deciding whether I like the Fifth best or the Second, and the Fifth used to sound absolutely insane to me.
I'd gladly sit through all five concertos in one concert. So far, the only one I've seen live was the First. Even at its petite size, it builds up a great wall of sound, and shows off the swell way he returns to an earlier theme with ever-increasing elaboration.
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Re: A couple of points
Date: 2007-06-20 01:27 pm (UTC)Sorry to hear of a toothless performance of Prokofiev's second piano concerto. Sounds like a failure to emphasize the strangeness of things. I really love the alien bits in his music, like the piano take-off in the variations of the third concerto, where suddenly the pianist is walking around on the ceiling. I keep having a hard time deciding whether I like the Fifth best or the Second, and the Fifth used to sound absolutely insane to me.
I'd gladly sit through all five concertos in one concert. So far, the only one I've seen live was the First. Even at its petite size, it builds up a great wall of sound, and shows off the swell way he returns to an earlier theme with ever-increasing elaboration.