Piano Concerto No. 4 (Prokofiev)
# Piano Concerto No. 4 (Prokofiev)

Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 4 in B-flat major for the left hand, Op. 53, was commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein and completed in 1931.

It was the only one of Prokofiev's complete piano concertos that never saw a performance during his lifetime. It was premiered in Berlin on 5 September 1956 by Siegfried Rapp and the West Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martin Rich. The United States premiere was in 1958, by Rudolf Serkin and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. The British premiere was in 1961, by Malcolm Binns.

Prokofiev expressed some interest in making an arrangement for piano two-hands and orchestra, but never went through with this idea.

## Structure

The four movements last around 25 minutes:

* Vivace (4–5 mins.)
* Andante (8–13 mins.)
* Moderato (8–9 mins.)
* Vivace (1–2 mins.)

The outer movements serve in a way as prelude and postlude, with the middle two comprising the bulk of the concerto. The Andante is reflective and makes rhetorical use of the strings, expanding with Romantic grandness. The remarkable third movement in modified sonata form, punctured and playful — some have said “sarcastic” — offers arresting, emphatic dialogs between the piano and the percussion section; it is marked Moderato and to be effective must be played strictly as such: not the least bit hurried. The Vivace ends abruptly, with the piano running up pianissimo to a high $B-flat_7.$

## Instrumentation

The work is scored for solo piano (left hand), 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 1 trumpet, 1 trombone, bass drum and strings.

## Recordings

| Pianist | Orchestra | Conductor | Record Company | Year of Recording | Format |
| - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Siegfried Rapp | Loh-Orchester Sondershausen (Orchester Der Deutsch-sowietischen Freundschaft) | Gerhart Wiesenhutter | ETERNA | 1962 | LP |
| John Browning | Boston Symphony Orchestra | Erich Leinsdorf | RCA Victor | 1968 | LP |
| Vladimir Ashkenazy | London Symphony Orchestra | André Previn | Decca | 1975 | LP |
| Kun-Woo Paik | Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra | Antoni Wit | Naxos | 1991 | CD |
| Boris Berman | Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra | Neeme Järvi | Chandos | 1989 | CD |
| Michel Beroff | Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra | Kurt Masur | EMI | 1974 | LP |
| Abdel Rahman El Bacha | Théâtre de la Monnaie Orchestra | Kazushi Ono | Fuga Libera | 2004 | CD |
| Nikolai Demidenko | London Philharmonic Orchestra | Alexander Lazarev | Hyperion | 1998 | CD |
| Gabriel Tacchino | Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg | Louis de Froment | Vox Records | 1977 | LP |
| Gabriel Tacchino | Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg | Louis de Froment | Vox Records | 2003 | CD |
| Leon Fleisher | Boston Symphony Orchestra | Seiji Ozawa | Sony Classical | 1992 | CD |
| Vladimir Krainev | Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra | Dmitri Kitajenko | Atlantic/Teldec | | CD |
| Alexander Toradze | Kirov Theatre Orchestra | Valery Gergiev | Philips | 1995,1996,1997 | CD |
| Viktoria Postnikova | USSR Ministry of Culture State Symphony Orchestra | Gennadi Rozhdestvensky | | | CD |
| Yefim Bronfman | Israel Philharmonic Orchestra | Zubin Mehta | Sony Classical | 1993 | CD |
| Jean-Efflam Bavouzet | BBC Philharmonic | Gianandrea Noseda | Chandos | 2012 | CD |
| Alexei Volodin | St. Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra | Valery Gergiev | Mariinsky | 2012 | CD |
