Violin Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev) - History

History

Despite the events leading to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and eventually the October Revolution, 1917 became Prokofiev's most productive year compositionally. Along with this concerto he completed the "Classical" Symphony, the Third and Fourth Piano Sonatas, and the Visions Fugitives for piano. He also began the cantata Seven, They are Seven, based on Chaldean texts, and worked on the Third Piano Concerto. Nevertheless, Prokofiev continued his habit of incorporating previously composed sections in the violin concerto (something he would also do in the Third Piano Concerto). He composed the concerto's opening melody in 1915, during his love affair with Nina Mescherskaya. The remaining movements were partly inspired by a 1916 Saint Petersburg performance of Karol Szymanowski's Myths by Polish violinist Paul Kochanski.

The failure of the Paris premiere was due partly to the difficulty in finding a soloist. Had it taken place in Petrograd in 1917, as initially planned, Kochanski would have been the soloist. By 1923, however, he and the composer had lost touch. Bronisław Huberman would not even look at the score. Nathan Milstein was still in Russia. Sergei Koussevitzky's concertmaster, Marcel Darrieux, was not famous, but he was a solid musician and a more than able violinist, which was all that was necessary for a performance (Darrieux also premiered Kurt Weill's Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments in 1925.) The concerto achieved success in the West the following year, when Joseph Szigeti played it in Prague with Fritz Reiner as conductor, then toured Europe and the United States with the piece. However, the U.S. premiere was not played by Szigeti, but by Richard Burgin, the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on 24 April 1925, again under Koussevitzky.

There were also the musical tastes of the Parisian public to consider. Audience members, especially those who came to Koussevitzky concerts, wanted modern music with a certain amount of shock value. The fact that The Rite of Spring had failed a decade earlier was relative—the choreography had been a failure; the music was a success, as proved a few months later when it was heard enthusiastically in concert. While Paris welcomed spiked dissonant works such as the ballet Chout (The Buffoon) and the Scythian Suite, the First Violin Concerto was simply too Romantic in tone for their preferences. The composer Georges Auric even called the work "Mendelssohnian."

The premiere of the work in the Soviet Union is also worth noting since it was given just three days after the Paris premiere by two 19-year-olds, Nathan Milstein and Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz played the orchestral part on the piano. Milstein later wrote in his memoirs, From Russia to the West, "I feel that if you have a great pianist like Horowitz playing with you, you don't need an orchestra." Milstein and Horowitz also introduced Karol Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto at the same concert.