Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major

Even while composing his ferocious Piano Concerto No. 2, Prokofiev was contemplating composing “a little pendant, something a little lighter”. By 1916 he had written most of the musical material for his Piano Concerto No. 3, including a theme from 1910 he had originally conceived but then rejected for his Piano Concerto No. 1. Significantly, he was also at that time composing his Violin Concerto No. 1 and his “Classical” Symphony; like those works, the Third Piano Concerto has the kind of grace, economy, and balance one might almost call Classical, even recalling the Symphony in some of its themes—for instance, the strings’ athletic sprint just before the soloist’s first entry, or the balletic grace of the theme on which the second movement’s variations are based. Its sequence of movements, too, recalls that used by Mozart in his concertos: two brisk outer movements framing a slow central movement—a far more orderly scheme than that of the wild, unfettered Second Piano Concerto. The October Revolution and Prokofiev’s emigration from Russia interrupted work on his Third Piano Concerto. He completed it while living in France in the summer of 1921, composing the rest of the second movement’s variations (including the delicious nocturne-like fourth), and the finale, using themes he had composed in 1918 while travelling through Japan en route to America. Given the sheer variety of times and places he composed the Third Piano Concerto, the result is a remarkably cohesive work that sounds bracingly modern yet suavely charming.