Prokofiev & Rachmaninoff

Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1912 and completed it the next year. However, that version of the concerto is lost; the score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution. Prokofiev reconstructed the work in 1923, two years after finishing his Piano Concerto No. 3, and declared it to be "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered Piano Concerto No. 4." 

This concerto for clarinet and orchestra is approximately nineteen minutes long. It was composed especially for Alison Hughes (clarinettist) and the University of Sussex Symphony Orchestra. Clarinet Concerto (Sky Blue) is inspired by a painting of the same name made in 1940 by Wassily Kandinsky in which figures appear to float free across a clear blue sky. The painting has been described (by Mona Molarsky, 2009) as 'an ethereal, Miró-like confection with biomorphic squiggles that buzz like glimmering insects in the afternoon sun'. The music is a continuous single movement with moments of harmonic transparency contrasting with sections of greater modal complexity. There are some sections which also feature soloists in the orchestra, perhaps like the free-floating figures in Kandinsky's painting.

Symphonic Dances, is an orchestral suite in three movements completed in October 1940 by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is his final major composition, and his only piece written in its entirety while living in the United States.

The work allowed him to indulge in a nostalgia for the Russia he had known, much as he had done in the Symphony No. 3, as well as to effectively sum up his lifelong fascination with ecclesiastical chants.