Phillip W. Serna Doctoral Recital from 2002

Quintet, Op. 39 by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
For Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, and Bass

Tema (Moderato) – Variation I – Variation II
Andante energico
Allegro sostenuto, me con brio
Adagio pesante
Allegro precipitato, ma non troppo presto
Andantino

Season Summers, Oboe
Sam Kaestner, Clarinet
Haijin Choi, Violin
Heather Neaveill, Viola
Dr. Phillip W. Serna, Double Bass

For more information, visit Dr. Phillip W. Serna at http://www.phillipwserna.com/.

Part I – Movement I – Tema (Moderato) – Variation I – Variation II

Part II – Movement II – Andante energico

Part III – Movement III – Allegro sostenuto, me con brio

Part IV – Movement IV – Adagio pesante

Part V – Movement V – Allegro precipitato, ma non troppo presto & Andantino

Program Notes from Doctoral Recital from 2002 at Northwestern University:

During the turbulent years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War in Europe, Prokofiev was completing his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. With a rebellious attitude against the reactionary tendencies he observed that institution, Prokofiev, outstanding in ability and a determined student of Glazunov, dealt a final ostentatious insult by performing his own First Piano Concerto. Upon graduation he received the coveted Rubensten Prize, leaving the Revolution torn country to the United States, and later to Paris, where he felt his iconoclastic tendencies better suited the musical trends.

In 1923, while living in Paris, Prokofiev had a champion in the bassist and conductor Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) who conducted the First Piano Concerto and First Violin Concerto. It was early the next year the Koussevitzky had commissioned the Second Symphony, a work that Prokofiev was determined “to be made of iron and steel.” “In order to earn some extra money while writing the Symphony,” Prokofiev noted, “I accepted a commission [in July 1924] to compose a ballet for a roving dance troupe which wished to present a program of several short pieces accompanied by five instruments. I proposed a quintet consisting of oboe clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass. The simple plot based on circus life, was titled Trapeze.” Boris Romanov, who toured Trapeze through Germany and Italy until 1925, when that work fell into obscurity, ran this ballet company. Due to the alternating 5/4 and 10/8 bars of the third movement of this suite version (the composer writing a simplified version in the score), the score proved too difficult for Romanov’s choreography to work, and Prokofieff eventually reworked the unpublished score into this 6-movement suite for the original instrumentation.

Nervous of the Soviet regime’s control of artists during the 1930’s, Prokofiev blamed “the Parisian atmosphere, where complex patterns and dissonances were the accepted thing, and what fostered my predilection for complex thinking”. Although having misgivings about the avant-garde work of Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), and the others of Les Six, the Quintet contains many elements that can be compared to their work and Igor Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat. The Quintet, Op.39 was premiered on March 5, 1927 in Moscow during one of his many visits before his permanent return there in 1935.

For more information, visit Dr. Phillip W. Serna at http://www.phillipwserna.com/.

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