(If you want,I can send you mp3 of Horowitz Ed)
Maybe I'm not a big Impressionist fan, but even now, listening to the Toccata (Op. 11 right?) I can hardly resist the urge to rip off my headphones and throw them out the window. It is pure garbage- a big jumble of RANDOM notes and dissonance- and yes, it is being played correctly. I have the Argerich recording, and it's nothing against her, just against Prokofiev. Please explain the criteria this piece's greatness so I may be enlightened.
Maybe I'm not a big Impressionist fan, but even now, listening to the Toccata (Op. 11 right?) I can hardly resist the urge to rip off my headphones and throw them out the window. It is pure garbage- a big jumble of RANDOM notes and dissonance- and yes, it is being played correctly. I have the Argerich recording, and it's nothing against her, just against Prokofiev. Please explain the criteria this piece's greatness so I may be enlightened.Btw, in her recording, the tempo is held quite well throughout. (it's just the notes I'm worried about)
If you like this piece, you'll love the 6th sonata. You get to hear Stalin getting it with a machine gun at the end of the last movement.
If I'm not mistaken, Prokofiev was an Impressionisttic composer... thus the connection.
Is that documented? I ask as I sit here at 1:32am writing a 3000 word essay entitled "With reference to the careers and works of Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich evaluate how far musical life in the Soviet era was reduced to the service of the needs of the state.",Ed
First of the so-called "War Sonatas", the Sixth has recently been recorded by the young Russian virtuoso Yevgeny Kissin, who scornfully dismisses the idea that the work had anything to do with the war: "The Sixth Sonata was written in 1939, before the war, so the experience Prokofiev portrays is that of the period of Stalinist repression, the 'cult of personality'. He truly captures this in the bitter, pompous opening theme of the first movement, a sort of 'Stalin leitmotif' which returns in the finale. The second movement is a parody of a military march, full of Prokofiev's veiled humour, sarcasm and mischief."The finale is truly a 'big sarcasm' and in the middle section Prokofiev recalls the 'Stalin leitmotif', giving it a completely different, ominous character to create a premonition of impending doom. And listen to what Prokofiev does at the very end of the coda: he crushes Stalin with the very weight of his own pompous leitmotif!" Ian MacDonaldEd