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I did it. I drove to BART this morning, and took the train into the City amid steadily increasing passengerage, and threaded my way through the large but genial crowds there for the Pride event, and passed some of the gateways to the celebration and glanced at the seething mass inside, and was glad that I was instead headed for the hushed temple of music over on the other side, where because I was running late due to the crowds I arrived just as Ilya Yakushev sat down for his pre-concert piano recital. We heard Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas Nos. 3 and 7 (if I'd been asked to pick, it would have been Nos. 2 and 6, my favorites), and some Rachmaninoff for contrast, and then when the orchestra arrived, Yakushev proceeded to give an even more fabulous pianistic display with one hand figuratively behind his back, for he was playing Prokofiev's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (No. 4).
On Friday evening the same young wonder had also performed the short, rather surprisingly sweet Piano Concerto No. 1 in his light, fluent style, followed by Mikhail Rudy swooping his heavier way through the very flashy and dramatic Concerto No. 5. And that, with Nos. 2 and 3 having been covered the previous week, is the entire Prokofiev piano concerto repertoire.
The other works varied greatly between the programs. On Friday, Prokofiev the elegant & charming, in the form of the Lieutenant Kijé Suite and excerpts from Cinderella. Now, everybody knows Lieutenant Kijé or should, but Cinderella is not so well-known. It's a full-scale ballet, but not like his Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev figured that if Tchaikovsky could write Sleeping Beauty, he could create a fairy-tale ballet as well, and this is a classical Tchaikovskian ballet in Prokofievian style, which fits it perfectly. I first heard this work only a decade or so ago; it's a trove of great Prokofiev: the clever dance of the ugly stepsisters (traditionally played by the tallest and gawkiest men available); the gorgeous but not at all soppy Grand Waltz; and the astonishing things Prokofiev does with percussion when the clock strikes midnight are all highlights.
On Sunday, the Festival concluded with a wholly different Prokofiev, the 1910s primitivist. The short but desperately torrential cantata They Are Seven, text based on a Chaldean cuneiform inscription propitiating demons (with the chorus chanting heavily the four syllables of the title phrase Semero ikh over and over while a tenor soloist rants about how evil the Seven are); and another ballet suite, the Scythian Suite, so notable for its range from the plunging depths to the piercingly high conclusion that the first I ever heard of this piece was excerpts on a hi-fi system test record.
All around a fine festival, covering much but leaving as much more untouched. I could design an entirely different and equally good Prokofiev festival program, featuring all of his symphonies, with the two versions of No. 4 and the two endings to No. 7, and more of his fugitive lighter piano music (Opp. 12 and 32 especially), and a lot of unknown tone poems and suites (Summer Night is one which pleases me) and his marches for military band (Op. 69 No. 3 is the catchiest), and for a final bang, the Mossolovian Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, which features the sound of machine guns going off in the revolutionary part ("Machine guns?" I can hear Calvin saying. "And I thought classical music was boring!")
On Friday evening the same young wonder had also performed the short, rather surprisingly sweet Piano Concerto No. 1 in his light, fluent style, followed by Mikhail Rudy swooping his heavier way through the very flashy and dramatic Concerto No. 5. And that, with Nos. 2 and 3 having been covered the previous week, is the entire Prokofiev piano concerto repertoire.
The other works varied greatly between the programs. On Friday, Prokofiev the elegant & charming, in the form of the Lieutenant Kijé Suite and excerpts from Cinderella. Now, everybody knows Lieutenant Kijé or should, but Cinderella is not so well-known. It's a full-scale ballet, but not like his Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev figured that if Tchaikovsky could write Sleeping Beauty, he could create a fairy-tale ballet as well, and this is a classical Tchaikovskian ballet in Prokofievian style, which fits it perfectly. I first heard this work only a decade or so ago; it's a trove of great Prokofiev: the clever dance of the ugly stepsisters (traditionally played by the tallest and gawkiest men available); the gorgeous but not at all soppy Grand Waltz; and the astonishing things Prokofiev does with percussion when the clock strikes midnight are all highlights.
On Sunday, the Festival concluded with a wholly different Prokofiev, the 1910s primitivist. The short but desperately torrential cantata They Are Seven, text based on a Chaldean cuneiform inscription propitiating demons (with the chorus chanting heavily the four syllables of the title phrase Semero ikh over and over while a tenor soloist rants about how evil the Seven are); and another ballet suite, the Scythian Suite, so notable for its range from the plunging depths to the piercingly high conclusion that the first I ever heard of this piece was excerpts on a hi-fi system test record.
All around a fine festival, covering much but leaving as much more untouched. I could design an entirely different and equally good Prokofiev festival program, featuring all of his symphonies, with the two versions of No. 4 and the two endings to No. 7, and more of his fugitive lighter piano music (Opp. 12 and 32 especially), and a lot of unknown tone poems and suites (Summer Night is one which pleases me) and his marches for military band (Op. 69 No. 3 is the catchiest), and for a final bang, the Mossolovian Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, which features the sound of machine guns going off in the revolutionary part ("Machine guns?" I can hear Calvin saying. "And I thought classical music was boring!")
