Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 53

The Prokofiev Concerto No. 4 was among the works for left hand alone commissioned for by the Paul Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s reaction upon receiving it? He returned it to Prokofiev saying, “Thank you very much, but I don’t understand a single note of it and shall not play it.” It would be 25 years before the work premiered in 1956, after Prokofiev’s death.

That wasn’t so unusual for Wittgenstein. He complained about Ravel’s concerto (1929) as well. He didn’t like the long solo passages. “If I wanted to play without the orchestra, I wouldn’t have commissioned a concerto!” Richard Strauss’s concerto (1924) called for the very large orchestra typical of many Strauss works. “How can one hand compete with a quadruple orchestra?” Wittgenstein asked. He rejected Hindemith’s Piano Music with Orchestra Op. 29 (1923). That work went into Wittgenstein’s drawer and wasn’t discovered until 2002. 

Prokofiev had many occasions to experience rejection, so maybe he viewed Wittgenstein’s assessment of the concerto as just another day at the office. Or maybe he considered that he was in good company.

Of the five Prokofiev concertos, the fourth is perhaps the least frequently performed. All five are sometimes recorded as a set, and the conductor Valery Gergiev has even programmed all five to be performed together in concert. While Gergiev conducted all five, three different pianists were used. Alexei Volodin played the fourth concerto.

(The video has been updated from the original post.)