I. Andantino – Andante assai II. Scherzo. Vivacissimo III. Moderato

With the November Bolshevik revolution only a few months away, Prokofiev (1891-1953) spent his last summer in pre-Revolutionary Russia in a small village close to St Petersburg. As was his practise, he worked on several compositions simultaneously: the First Violin Concerto and the Classical Symphony. The Classical Symphony's originality lies in its conscious sighting of the past and its reinterpretation of the composer's relationship with tradition. The Violin Concerto can also be understood as adhering to the principals of the neo-Classical aesthetic: “I felt that if Haydn was alive today, he would compose as he did earlier, but there would certainly be something new in his works,” Prokofiev argued later. As a student, he had astonished the audiences of St Petersburg with his daring piano playing and during his brief stay in Pars in 1913, written a number of rough, iconoclastic orchestral works. However, he gradually drifted away from self-serving attacks on the bourgeoisie and focussed his attention on dealing with the classical tradition.

The three movement Violin Concerto in D major follows the structural principals of the classical-romantic concerto, although instead of the usual fast-slow-fast arrangement, Prokofiev surrounds a fast movement with two relatively slow ones: the dreamlike atmosphere of the opening Andantino is punctured with a mocking Scherzo, the grotesque tone of which accompanies Prokofiev's entire oeuvre. Then the peace of the opening movement is restored with the Moderato finalé's moving expressive melodicism and supreme orchestration. The opening theme of the concerto is a conscious allusion to Brahms, and it re-emerges in the finale with a different character and meter. Prokofiev had already conceived this in 1915, but he was preoccupied with his opera based on Dostoievsky's The Gambler and only sat down to write the concerto in 1917, which he initially called a concertino. “I was so sorry that because of other work, I couldn't return earlier to the meditative, dreamy beginning of the violin concertino” he noted later.

The concerto was due to be premiered in November 1917 in St Petersburg but the revolution interceded and Prokofiev decided to flee abroad, taking the manuscript with him. Finally, it received its first performance in 1923, conducted by Koussevitzky, but the work was judged a failure. An audience that had grown accustomed to the fresh outpourings of the European avant-garde didn't know where to place such a transparently clear work. It also disappointed those were seeking recompense for modernity in virtuoso violin playing: Prokofiev's concerto does not test the soloist's technique but rather, their musicianship. In 1924, the Hungarian violinist József Szigeti discovered this concerto and gave numerous performances of it in the ensuing years. This largely contributed to Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto winning a deserved place for itself in the repertoire and musical history.