Piano Concerto No. 4 (Prokofiev)

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Sergey Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 4 in B-flat major (Op. 53) for the left hand was commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein and completed in 1931. As Wittgenstein had refused to play the work, saying that he could not understand it, it became the only one of Prokofiev's complete piano concertos that never saw a performance during the composer's lifetime.

1 Movements
2 Analysis
3 Instrumentation
4 Recordings
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Movements

The concerto has four movements, lasting around 25 minutes:

Vivace (4-5 mins)
Andante (9-13 mins)
Moderato (8-9 mins)
Vivace (1-2 mins)

[edit] Analysis

The first and last movement serve as a brief prelude and postlude respectively. The middle two movements comprise the main bulk of the concerto. The andante is more reflective and expands with a romantic greatness. The sarcastic Moderato is in "modified sonata-form". The concerto has an unusual ending, with the piano running up pianissimo to a very high B-flat_{7_.}

_{[edit] Instrumentation}

_{2 Flutes}

_{2 Oboes}

_{2 Clarinets}

_{2 Bassoons}

_{2 French Horns}

_Trumpet

_Trombone

_{Percussion (Bass Drum)}

_{Solo Piano (Left Hand)}

_{Strings (1st and 2nd Violins, Violas, Cellos, Double Basses)}

_{[edit] Recordings}

Pianist	Orchestra	Conductor	Record Company	Year of Recording	Format
Vladimir Ashkenazy	London Symphony Orchestra	André Previn	Decca	1975	CD
Kun Woo Paik	Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra	Antoni Wit	Naxos	1991	CD
Boris Berman	Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra	Neeme Järvi	Chandos Records	1989	CD
Michel Beroff	Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra	Kurt Masur			CD
Abdel Rahman El Bacha	Théâtre de la Monnaie Orchestra	Kazushi Ono	Fuga Libera		CD
Nikolai Demidenko	London Philharmonic Orchestra	Alexander Lazarev			CD
Gabriel Tacchino	Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg	Louis de Froment	Quadromania	1977	CD
Leon Fleisher	Boston Symphony Orchestra	Seiji Ozawa	Sony Classical	1991	CD
Vladimir Krainev	Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra	Dmitri Kitajenko	Atlantic/Teldec		CD
Alexander Toradze	Kirov Theatre Orchestra	Valery Gergiev	Philips		CD
Viktoria Postnikova	USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony Orchestra	Gennadi Rozhdestvensky			CD