Tour: Prokofiev, Brahms

Prokofiev and Brahms... Night and day, and yet they have something in common: both are generally considered serious, even gloomy at times, with the Russian composer also often seen as grotesque and his German counterpart as melancholy. Nevertheless, they both have a lighter, more unbridled and relaxed side. The program of the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Chinese tour will kick of with a fairy tale in the spotlight. Prokofiev himself composed three different suites from his ballet Cinderella, paying tribute to Tchaikovsky. They upend the original order of the ballet’s movements, but nonetheless make for a good presentation of the plot of the three movements. After that, the symphonic sounds of romantic relief will round up the concert experience as the program will be concluded by the serene symphony of Johannes Brahms, written when he had finally stepped out from Beethoven’s shadow.

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 choice of the story is not only about escaping into art and the power of fairy tales, as it also proves the composer's lifelong admiration for Tchaikovsky. The ballet premiered only after the conclusion of the war, in Moscow in 1945, and then, as a result of its success, there was a second production in 1946, which could by no means be taken for granted in Prokofiev’s lifetime. The composer wrote orchestral suites based on the piece, 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 exclusively music from the first two acts; they conclude with the end of the ball. In the third, the prince finally seeks out Cinderella.

It took Brahms about fifteen years to find his own symphonic voice after Beethoven’s Ninth. In contrast to that dramatic struggle and dramatic achievement, the Second Symphony flowed almost effortlessly from the composer’s hands: the score was completed during a single summer. “All blue sky, babbling of streams, sunshine and cool green shade”. This is how a close friend of Brahms’ summarized the essence of the music. And indeed, the tranquility of the beautiful Wörthersee, where the work was composed, is echoed in the music. Although Brahms himself was lightheartedly teasing his publisher when he described his composition as unbearably melancholy, whose score should appear with a black border, the symphony has a pastoral mood instead of the earlier pain and struggle. Light and darkness, lyricism and power, intimacy and openness converge in the piece, which is built from the three-note motif introduced in the bass at the opening of the first movement. These three notes make the music easy to follow. The slow movement introduced by the cello brings a few clouds, but the oboe solo over a plucked accompaniment banishes them in the third movement, which is not a scherzo but rather an intermezzo. The finale, alternating between manic energy and gloominess is among Brahms's most unbridled expressions in music.