Trifonov Plays Brahms

Sergei Prokofiev’s last years were anything but happy. Barely 60 years old, his health had already begun to decline. He suffered from a number of physical ailments, but the psychological consequences of a 1948 Communist Party hearing were equally serious. Prokofiev was devastated by that attack, which had branded his music as “formalistic.” He was still officially acknowledged as the Soviet Union’s greatest composer, but most of his works — some of which he thought quite highly of — could not be performed. For instance, he was never to see a staging of his massive opera War and Peace, which he worked on for the last 12 years of his life. 

Prokofiev was sustained during these difficult years by one thing alone: his work. To the end of his life, he composed as prolifically as he had always done. He completed his Piano Sonata No. 9 in 1947, a sonata for cello and piano in 1949, and numerous pieces on official commission. He also revised some of his earlier works, such as the Fourth Symphony and the Cello Concerto (which became the Symphony-Concerto), generally considered the greatest work of Prokofiev’s final period. 

The Seventh Symphony was commissioned by the Soviet Children’s Radio Division, whose task was to create musical programs for young people. Prokofiev wanted to write something light and simple for this occasion, but this wasn’t going to be another Peter and the Wolf. The humor and immediacy of a children’s story were replaced by a nostalgic view of youth from the perspective of old age. Prokofiev wanted to avoid complications in his harmonic language so that he could be easily understood, even by children (inaccessibility was one of the charges leveled at him in 1948). As a result, the work is akin to a second-summer day; the sun, no longer scorching as in August, is mild and gentle, evoking feelings of warmth and serenity. The Seventh Symphony was to be the last major work Prokofiev completed, and its first performance also marked his last public appearance. 

The symphony begins with an expressive melody that Prokofiev develops by adding some fast-moving countersubjects in sixteenth notes. A silky second theme follows, a broad legato melody in the Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff tradition, which had been quite alien to Prokofiev’s earlier style. A sprightly third idea is introduced by staccato woodwinds and glockenspiel, which is more in character with the old Prokofiev. These three ideas provide the basis for a largely lyrical and contemplative movement. 

The second movement is a scherzo with many waltz elements. It begins with a leisurely Allegretto that gradually escalates into a faster Allegro as the excitement builds. The trio, by contrast, is more laid back. Its expressive melody is played by muted violins and then by oboe. The scherzo-waltz returns, accompanied by a new variation in which the theme is reinforced by the brass. After a varied repeat of the trio, the waltz returns and develops into a frantic closing section. 

The third movement, Andante espressivo, is again based on two contrasting ideas. The first is of a legato character, emphasizing long melodic phrases (Prokofiev’s biographer, Israel Nestyev, was reminded here of Friar Laurence’s music from the composer’s ballet Romeo and Juliet). The second is staccato and uses rhythm as its primary propelling force. The two ideas are combined, and the legato melody returns, played by flute and accompanied by piano and harp. A quiet brass chord closes the movement. 

The finale is full of Prokofiev’s typical humor, recalling the upbeat days of Lieutenant Kijé (1934). But the fun and frolic are soon interrupted, as the broad romantic theme from the first movement returns, followed by the staccato theme from the same movement. The music takes a more serious turn at this point; the tempo slows, and the brass play loud notes that threaten to destroy the cheerful atmosphere that has prevailed so far. 

The symphony’s original ending was soft and wistful, but Nestyev recalls that during rehearsals, Prokofiev was persuaded to write an alternative ending that brings back the playful first theme, ending the symphony on a loud, boisterous note. However, the composer always preferred his first ending, and it is that one we hear in these performances. 

— Peter Laki 

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music at Bard College. 

If one could choose a handful of works to exemplify why Johannes Brahms has captivated listeners over the years, that list would include the Second Piano Concerto, completed in 1881 at the height of his maturity. Here, all the elements of Brahms’s art come together. There is the joining of the grandly Olympian with the intimately songful. There is the virtuoso command of large-scale musical architecture, for a composer, one of the rarest gifts in the world. More subtly, in this work one finds on display the singular mysteriousness of Brahms — music at once powerfully communicative and elusive. 

For soloists proposing to master this gigantic concerto, it lives up to one of Brahms’s puckish nicknames for it: “the Long Terror.” Pianists speak of the exquisite anxiety of stepping onto the stage with the Alpine steeps of the first movement in your head, wondering how you’re going to find the place in your mind and fingers to attack it. 

For Brahms himself, the Second Piano Concerto was probably, from its first inspiration during a sunny vacation in Italy, one of the most untroubled major efforts of his life. No composer had ever faced greater expectations, starting from when Robert Schumann declared the 20-year-old Brahms to be the virtual messiah of German music. From then on, Brahms had to live with that forbidding prophecy hanging over him. But by the time of the Second Concerto, he had more or less fulfilled Schumann’s prophecy and had little left to prove — though he never rested on his laurels. One by one, he had painstakingly mastered most of the traditional genres and produced historic masterpieces in each. 

Already in the First Piano Concerto, the essential elements of the Brahmsian concerto were in place. The scale and style are symphonic as much as concerto-like, with the soloist less the heroic voice of Romantic concertos and more a participant in a symphonic dialogue. The structural approach of these two works is also distinctive, particularly in the Second Concerto, which is set across four movements rather than the genre’s traditional three. 

The Second Piano Concerto begins with one of the most beautiful movements of Brahms’s output, its expressive import without any of his familiar touches of tragedy or fatalism. The piano textures range from massive to delicate, interwoven with rich orchestral textures. The soloist steadily changes roles, their music moving from long, unaccompanied solos to lacy filigree accompanying the orchestra. While there are towering proclamations and moments of drama, the overall tone is lofty and magisterial. The opening horn call reminds us of Brahms’s love of the outdoors, of climbing Alpine peaks. Perhaps the whole first movement can be heard as music of rocky summits and spreading forests — and in that respect, a complement to the composer’s idyllic Second Symphony. 

Next comes the movement Brahms described to a friend as a “tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo.” When Brahms said things like that, he was usually joking; this D-minor movement (the only one to depart from B-flat major) is immense, dark-toned, and impassioned. It brings to the concerto a new emotional gravitas and a relentless rhythmic drive. In fact, this movement was originally drafted for the Violin Concerto, but Brahms may have jettisoned it because that work needed the opposite — something lighter. 

The slow movement begins with one of those sighing, exquisite melodies that Brahms invented and owned. Here we witness one of the innovations of this concerto: a slow movement in which the first section is dominated by a solo cello; only in the middle does the piano come to the fore, spinning out languid quasi-improvisatory garlands. The scoring is intimate and chamber-like — another kind of contrast to the first movement. 

The concerto comes to rest on a rondo finale of marvelous lightness, whimsy, and dancing rhythms. British musicologist Donald Francis Tovey caught the effect of the finale in programmatic terms: “We have done our work — let the children play in the world which our work has made safer and happier for them.” For the listener, the charm of the finale is its glittering instrumental colors and its ravishing melodies. 

Brahms dedicated the Second Piano Concerto to Eduard Marxsen, his childhood piano and composition teacher in Hamburg. After the premiere in Budapest in 1881, Brahms and conductor-pianist Hans von Bülow took the piece on the road. The composer’s old friend Clara Schumann wrote in her journal: “Brahms is celebrating such triumphs everywhere as seldom fall to the lot of a composer.” To keep themselves amused, Bülow and Brahms gave concerts that included both piano concertos, switching off at piano and podium as the mood struck them. Despite the decline of Brahms’s once-brilliant piano skills to what Clara bemoaned as “thump, bang, and scrabble,” somehow he was always able to play — or at least fake — his way through his concertos, which remain among the most beloved but also most difficult in the repertoire. 

— adapted from a note by Jan Swafford 

Jan Swafford has written biographies of Ives, Brahms, and Beethoven and contributes regularly to Slate. He is a long-time program writer and pre-concert lecturer for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.