Having graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he studied in two specialities, Prokofiev won the recognition from his teachers as a pianist. Not without argument, but he received the Rubinstein prize as the best pianist of his course. However, his playing was far from romantic pianism, Rachmaninoff’s powerful and emotional manner, as well as from Scriabin’s refined and delicate sonority. At first, Prokofiev’s dry, percussive and ‘thorny’ manner aroused bewilderment and shock.
“The Bolshevik pianist” with “steel biceps,” that’s how foreign critics characterized Prokofiev. But it perhaps was Heinrich Neuhaus who most accurately disclosed the essence of Prokofiev’s peculiar pianism, “Prokofiev the pianist’s features are so conditioned by the ones of Prokofiev the composer that it makes it almost impossible to speak of them outside his piano works. His playing is distinguished by courage, confidence, iron will, steel rhythm, enormous power of sound … special epic constituent which thoroughly avoids everything too subtle and intimate… At the same time, a surprising ability to make lyricism … melancholy, thoughtfulness, some special human warmth completely clear for the listener…”
Fortunately, Prokofiev’s self-interpretations have been preserved on numerous archival recordings. Made in the 1920-1930s, they reflect different sides of the composer’s music and his renditions of his own works. The early pieces – Opuses 11 and 12, fragments from the cycles Sarcasms and Vision fugitives are neighbours to compositions which are more complicated and expressive in terms of music language such as Sonata No. 4 and a famous recording of Piano Concerto No. 3 with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Piero Coppola.
