listed in the catalogue as Opus 53, dating from 1931, consisting of four movements, and still in manuscript. A significant reference to its being “for the left hand” begins to tell us a story. Prokofieff wrote it for a popular Austrian pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the First World War. Wittgenstein had already been armed with special scores by such versatile worthies as Richard Strauss, Erich Korngold, and Franz Schmidt. Prokofieff responded with alacrity when Wittgenstein approached him too. The Concerto, bristling with titanic difficulties and a complex stylistic scheme that would have baffled two hands if not two brains, was submitted for inspection to the one-armed virtuoso. Wittgenstein disliked it cordially, refused to perform it, and thus consigned it to the silence of a manuscript.

Maurice Ravel, approached in due course for a similar work, was the only composer to emerge with an enduring work from contact with this gifted casualty of the war. However, he too had trouble. When completed, the Concerto was virtually deeded to the pianist. Wittgenstein now proceeded to object to numerous passages and to insist on alterations. Ravel angrily refused, and was anything but mollified to discover that Wittgenstein was taking “unpardonable liberties” in public performances of the concerto.... Perhaps it was just as well that Prokofieff’s Fourth Piano Concerto remained in its unperformed innocence—a concerto for no hands.

It was not long before the mood to compose a piano concerto was upon Prokofieff again. This became his Fifth, finished in the summer of 1932 and performed for the first time in Berlin at a Philharmonic Concert conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Prokofieff was the soloist. It is interesting to note that the program contained another soloist—the gentleman playing the viola part in Berlioz’s “Childe Harold Symphony,” a gentleman by the name of Paul Hindemith. There was a performance of the Concerto in Paris two months later.

When the concerto and the composer reached Boston together the following year, Prokofieff gave an interviewer from the “Transcript” both a description of the way he composed and an analysis of the score. About his method Prokofieff had this to say:—

“I am always on the lookout for new melodic themes. These I write in a notebook, as they come to me, for future use. All my work is founded on melodies. When I begin a work of major proportions I usually have accumulated enough themes to make half-a-dozen symphonies. Then the work of selection and arrangement begins. The composition of this Fifth Concerto began with such melodies. I had enough of them to make three concertos.”

His analysis follows:—

“The emphasis in this concerto is entirely on the melodic. There are five movements, and each movement contains at least four themes or melodies. The development of these themes is exceedingly compact and concise. This will be evident when I tell you that the entire five movements do not take over twenty minutes in performance. Please do not misunderstand me. The themes are not without development. In a work such as Schumann’s ‘Carnival’ there are also many themes, enough to make a considerable number of symphonies or concertos. But they are not developed at all. They are merely stated. In my new Concerto there is actual development of the themes, but this development is as compressed and condensed as possible. Of course there is no program, not a sign or suggestion of a program. But neither is there any movement so expansive as to be a complete sonata-form.

I. Allegro con brio: meno mosso. “The first movement is an Allegro con brio, with a meno mosso as middle section. Though not in a sonata-form, it is the main movement of the Concerto, fulfills the functions of a sonata-form and is in the spirit of the usual sonata-form.

II. Moderato ben accentuato. “This movement has a march-like rhythm, but we must be cautious in the use of this term. I would not think of calling it a march because it has none of the vulgarity or commonness which is so often associated with the idea of a march and which actually exists in most popular marches.

III. Allegro con fuoco. “The third movement is a Toccata. This is a precipitate, displayful movement of much technical brilliance and requiring a large virtuosity—as difficult for orchestra as for the soloist. It is a Toccata for orchestra as much as for piano.

IV. Larghetto. “The fourth movement is the lyrical movement of the Concerto. It starts off with a soft, soothing theme: grows more and more intense in the middle portion, develops breadth and tension, then returns to the music of the beginning. German commentators have mistakenly called it a theme and variations.

V. Vivo: Piu Mosso: Coda. “The Finale has a decidedly classical flavor. The Coda is based on a new theme which is joined by the other themes of the Finale.”

Summing up his own view of the Concerto, Prokofieff concluded:—

“The Concerto is not cyclic in the Franckian sense of developing several movements out of the theme or set of themes. Each movement has its own independent themes. But there is reference to some of the material of the First Movement in the Third; and also reference to the material of the Third Movement in the Finale. The piano part is treated in concertante fashion. The piano always has the leading part which is closely interwoven with significant music in the orchestra.”

After this rather mild and dispassionate self-appraisal, it comes as something of a shock to read the slashing commentary of Prokofieff’s Soviet biographer Nestyev:—

“The machine-like Toccata, in the athletic style of the earlier Prokofieff, presents his bold jumps, hand-crossing, and Scarlatti technic in highly exaggerated form. The tendency to wide skips à la Scarlatti is carried to monstrous extremes. Sheer feats of piano acrobatics completely dominate the principal movements of the Concerto. In the precipitate Toccata this dynamic quality degenerates into mere lifeless mechanical movement, with the result that the orchestra itself seems to be transformed into a huge mechanism with fly-wheels, pistons, and transmission belts.”

To Nestyev it was further proof of the “brittle, urbanistic” sterility of Prokofieff’s “bourgeois” wanderings.