Prokofiev's 4th Piano Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 53 was commissioned by the Austrian-born pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein had fought in World War I, and was wounded in Poland, near Zamosc. Russia took him prisoner, and his arm had to be amputated. Ironically Wittgenstein failed to understand the work, and it was not premiered until 5/9/56 by Siegfried Rapp and the West Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martin Rich.
Scored for solo piano (left hand), 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 1 trumpet, 1 trombone, bass drum and strings, it has four movements - Vivace, Andante, Moderato & Vivace. To quote from Fred Kirshnit's notes written for the concert The Circle of Shostakovich, in April 2003 and quoted in full on the ASO's website: "...The structural peccadillo of this inventive miniature is an insouciant circular design. The first movement, although marked Vivace, is indeed a Rondo, more suitable in formal musical architecture as an ending section. We enter the fashionable world of the Stravinskian Neoclassical almost immediately and it is easy to recall two of Prokofiev's earlier works, the "Classical" Symphony No. 1 and the brisk, one-movement First Concerto. The opening coolness establishes a certain detachment, reminiscent of Haydn, a holding out of the emotional content at one arm's length. Thoughtful and measured, the Andante is the finest Prokofiev slow movement to date, foreshadowing in its patient construction of intensity the great third movement of the Fifth Symphony. The composer, who lost the only copy of his Second Concerto when his tenants burned it for warmth while he was away on concert tour, almost immediately rescued the main theme of this section once it became apparent that Wittgenstein would never perform the work as a whole, giving it new life and form as one of the loveliest melodies in his ballet Romeo and Juliet. In the Moderato section, Prokofiev rolls up his sleeve and fashions an entire clinic on the subject of touch, rising to the challenge to make the writing for only one hand as varied as that for both. But it is the incredible fourth movement that identifies this composition as uniquely Prokofiev. Only seconds over a minute in length, this razor-sharp distillation of the opening material is an exclamation point that ends like an ellipsis. Satisfying the urge to conclude with a Rondo after all, only the composer of a set of solo piano pieces called Sarcasms could have written such a signature close..."
This Chandos recording, by Boris Berman with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi dates from 1989.
