Piano Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)


set about composing his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10, in 1911, and finished it the next year. The shortest of all his concertos, it is in one movement, about fifteen minutes in duration, and dedicated to the “dreaded Tcherepnin.”

Structure

The work's single 15-minute span has the following tempo markings:
  1. Allegro brioso —
  2. Poco più mosso —
  3. Tempo I —
  4. Meno mosso —
  5. Più mosso —
  6. Animato —
  7. Andante assai —
  8. Allegro scherzando —
  9. Poco più sostenuto —
  10. Più mosso —
  11. Animato
Extroverted, even showy, for much of its length, the concerto begins and ends with the same spacious D-flat theme. Its Andante assai section, in G-sharp minor, offers warm, veiled contrast: a quasi “middle movement.”

Premiere

The concerto was first performed in Moscow on 25 July, 1912, with the composer as soloist and Konstantin Saradzhev conducting. Saradzhev “realized splendidly all my tempos,” wrote Prokofiev afterwards.

Rubinstein Prize

The 22-year-old composer-pianist won the Anton Rubinstein Prize for pianistic accomplishments in an 18 May 1914 performance of the work before the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He had proposed his own concerto for the programme, reasoning that, though he may not be able to win with a classical concerto, with his own concerto the jury would be “unable to judge whether he was playing well or not.” Competition rules required that the piece be published, so Prokofiev found a publisher willing to produce twenty copies in time for the event. The jury headed by Alexander Glazunov awarded Prokofiev the prize rather reluctantly.

Recordings