Symphony n° 2 of Prokofiev

The Symphony n° 2 in minor D, opus 40 of Sergueï Prokofiev (1924), representative of the style town planner, is work more “avant-gardist” of the type-setter, who initially called it, not without pride, “the Symphonie of iron and steel” before rejecting of it, on late, the too compact aspect of the structure and the orchestration as well as the excessively conclusive character, and to project to alter it as it had done it with his Fourth symphony (this project could not be concretized).

The symphony is made up of two movements:

  1. Allegro Ben articolato
  2. Topic and variations

Data sheet

Orchestration

History

Composition

Creation and reception

Work was created with Paris the June 6th 1925 under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky, and it was intended to shock a public considered as sensitive to the cold while at the same time the city accommodated a good part of European musical modernity (the Groupe of the Six, Igor Stravinski, Maurice Ravel…).

Analyzes

The structure in two movements of fundamentally dissimilar duration and character (an allegro and a succession of variations) is copied on the Opus 111 of Ludwig van Beethoven and reveals, despite everything the “barbarian” posture, the conscience of a musical heritage to assume and a debt to be honoured.

Allegro Ben articolato

From one duration of approximately 10 minutes, it is about the most extreme example of “musical mechanization”, and the movement more contrapuntic and most dissonant written by Prokofiev.

Topic and variations

From one duration of approximately 25 minutes, it is based on a topic of Chinese origin . The movement is characterized by the systematically strange character from its tonalities and its lyric and mysterious environment. The topic itself is Andante and it is followed of six variations:
  1. the istesso tempo
  2. Allegro not troppo
  3. Allegro
  4. Larghetto
  5. Allegro idiot brilliance
  6. Allegro moderato
Work ends in one coded taking again completely the topic in Andante molto, Doppio movimento .

Selective discography

Versions of Seiji Ozawa, Erich Leinsdorf and Guennadi Rojdestvensky.

References

See too

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