“Citizen. European. Pianist.” These are the three words Igor Levit uses to describe himself, the musician who will perform all of Prokofiev’s piano concertos at three concerts, with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Described by The New York Times as “one of the essential artists of his generation,” Levit this time will play the solo in the composer’s most famous and also most traditional piano concerto, the three-movement No. 3. The piece is introduced by the orchestral version of Prokofiev’s chamber overture written for original Hebrew themes; after the intermission, stories take center stage. Prokofiev himself composed three different suites from his ballet Cinderella, paying tribute to Tchaikovsky; upending the original order of the movements of the ballet, they nonetheless provide a good presentation of the plot of the three movements. This time, Iván Fischer selected movements from two suites for his Cinderella interpretation.

For his own works, Prokofiev almost never used folk music melodies or ones borrowed from other composers. This is why this overture, written for Hebrew themes, occupies such a special place in his oeuvre; it is more than a simple exercise in style. It is a rethinking of real Hebrew melodies. The composer was commissioned to write the piece in 1919 in the United States by clarinetist Simeon Bellison, who presented Prokofiev with a book of songs to serve as inspiration. Prokofiev rejected the request, but then fell in love with the world of the melodies after all. He sketched out the piece – originally conceived for the clarinet, a string quartet and the piano – in just one day, and then finalized it in less than two weeks. It presents and explores two themes in detail, evoking the world of the klezmer.

No musical idea is ever lost, it is only transformed – we might say of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The composer always jotted down fragments of melodies and thoughts which he did not use in the end. It was from some of his notes produced between 1911 and 1918, and new parts composed in 1921, that Piano Concerto No. 3 was born. It is the only one of his five works in the genre which follows the traditional format of three movements, fast-slow-fast. The movements are nearly identical in length, and are thematically balanced, while also including the wry style and breathtaking arrangement their composer is known for. Following a dynamic opening movement, a variation theme of five versions follows, concluding with bright accords in a finale challenging for the pianist.

Glass shoes, a pumpkin carriage, dwarfs jumping out of the clock striking midnight – yet Prokofiev’s Cinderella was composed during the darkest years of global conflict, between 1940 and 1944. The piece premiered only after the conclusion of the war, in 1945, in Moscow. The composer wrote orchestral suites from the ballet, but these were not limited to simply arranging various select numbers from the original score back-to-back: he transposed them, expanded them and changed their order. The first two suites contain almost only the music from the first two acts; they conclude with the end of the ball. In the third, the prince finally seeks out Cinderella.

Did you know? Prokofiev’s Overture premiered in New York on February 2, 1920, with the participation of the composer; his Piano Concerto No. 3 premiered in Chicago on December 16, 1921, with the composer performing the solo and Frederick Stock conducting; Cinderella premiered in Moscow on November 21, 1945, with Yuri Fayer conducting; the Budapest Festival Orchestra most recently performed the Overture on December 1, 2016 (conductor: Iván Fischer); the orchestra most recently played Piano Concerto No. 3 on January 28, 2014 (soloist: Andrey Korobeynikov; conductor: Iván Fischer); the BFO most recently performed the Cinderella Suite on February 4, 2023 (conductor: Iván Fischer).

Contemporary events: French composer Darius Milhaud’s piece The Ox on the Roof premiered in Paris on February 21, 1920 / The first Salzburg Festival opened on August 22, 1920 / English author Agatha Christie’s first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 / German painter Hans Baluschek painted his depiction City of Workers in 1920 / Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s opera Káťa Kabanová premiered in Brno on November 23, 1921 / Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published his work Tractatus logico-philosophicus in 1921 / Norwegian painter Edvard Munch painted his picture Model by the Wicker Chair in 1921 / Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 premiered in Leningrad (today’s Saint Petersburg) on November 3, 1945 / Germany capitulated unconditionally on May 8, 1945; the Second World War ended following Japan’s surrender on September 2, / Croatian-born Serbian author and later recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, Ivo Andrić’s novel The Bridge on the Drina was published in 1945