Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major

Prokofiev completed his Violin Concerto No. 1 in 1917 in St Petersburg. The next year, he left his native Russia and moved first to America and then to France to pursue his double career as a radically modern composer and brilliant concert pianist. The first performance of the Violin Concerto No. 1 did not take place until 1923 in Paris. By then, the city’s concertgoers had come to expect modish modernism in new works, and Prokofiev’s concerto surprised and disappointed them; the music’s warmly expressive Romanticism seemed like a throwback to an earlier musical age. The concerto’s beautifully sustained lyricism has long since won it a firm place in the concert-hall repertory. The first of the three movements is dominated by its long opening melody for the solo violin, deployed against a quietly shimmering orchestral accompaniment. Then comes a short and brilliant “Scherzo”, followed by a more leisurely finale, with a return of the first movement’s violin melody leading toward a serene conclusion.