Prokofiev - Piano Concerto 2 [Krainev/ Kitaenko-Radio Sinfonie Orchester Frankfurt] Two Russians, Vladimir Krainev & Dmitri Kitaenko work together perfectly, both fairly unknown by western audiences, this boxset of the Five Concertos is a very nice addition to my collection.
Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto is superb, full of sardonic wit, jarring melodies, and always the unexpected and the welcome lingering around the corner, it's also full of the most intense variety, how does Prokofiev string it all together into a cohesive whole?.
I love the quirky third movement Intermezzo, it has so many instruments doing strange things, you can almost imagine each instrument is an animal, in some bizarre circus come to town, the 'laughing bassoons' [0:21-0:32], truly a moment of sheer genius, and they come back to laugh some more [2:12-2:22], the piano makes its entrance by this quirky lop-sided hand over hand tune [0:44-1:12], superb to watch as well as hear, there's a whole section in the middle that goes from a string waltz punctuated by flutes [3:54-4:15], and then the piano stutters a tune [4:16+], it slowly builds up by the brass filling the gaps [4:37+], and dissonant string stabbings [4:47+], ending in the piano going into forte mode [4:55+], a nice minute of controlled madness, towards the end it becomes a lumbering giant out of control [5:57-6:22], the more you listen to it, the more you discover that you want to hear next time round, this is the essence of discovery, and Prokofiev is a drug that you get hooked on for life.
Here's Yuja Wang playing the third movement Intermezzo on YouTube, with Charles Dutoit conducting.
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