57 fall program - Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra

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Piano Concerto No. 1 in D flat Major, Opus 10
Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953)
As a child of comfortably well-to-do parents, Prokofiev’s musical abilities were recognized at
an early age, and he had already composed a number of youthful works when he was admitted
to the St. Petersburg Conservatory at the age of thirteen. His precocious abilities impressed
members of the faculty including Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov and Nicolai
Tcherepnin. His precociousness evidently made him something of a smart-aleck: he once kept
statistics of his classmates’ mistakes until one of them pinned him down and pulled his ears!
Concerto No. 1 was composed during his conservatory years and was premiered by Prokofiev
himself in Moscow on August 7, 1912. It was dedicated to “the dreaded Tcherepnin” who had
harshly criticized Prokofiev’s conducting and was, Prokofiev felt, always unduly critical of his
efforts. Interestingly, Tcherepnin later wrote that he had, in fact, been quite critical because he
recognized Prokofiev’s talent and hoped to prevent him from becoming too egotistic. Although
Tcherepnin’s criticism evidently bothered Prokofiev all his life, it had been Tcherepnin who had
exposed his student to the music of the great classical composers and who is often given credit
for Prokofiev’s early interest in classicism.
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Program Notes
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