Are final thoughts the best thoughts?

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If you look at the catalogs of some composers,it seems they could never keep their hands off their own music, revising it long after they first brought it to the public. In many cases the revisions are a result of these public performances. One would think that such changes tend to be for the better, but it is surprising how often they are not.

Well, perhaps it is not so surprising. After a piece is performed the composer loses exclusive ownership of it. It becomes a public entity, and one cannot help but include public opinion in your perception of your own music. It is this public element that perhaps explains why later versions of pieces are often less individual. Listen sometime to the first version of the Schumann 4th Symphony, or any number of his piano pieces. Check out the unrevised Linz version (1866) of the Bruckner 1st Symphony. For that matter, listen to the first version of the Sibelius Violin Concerto or 5th Symphony, both works that overall benefited from Sibelius' later thoughts; but even here, there are glorious individual touches that were chopped from the last version. Some performers, such as Vladimir Horowitz, have tried to get the best of both worlds by playing hybrid versions of various pieces, and his 1913/1931 version of the Rachmaninoff Second Sonata even received the composer's blessing.

Of all composers, Prokofiev was one of the most relentless tinkerers. He often used the same material in different ways in different works-both his Third and Fourth Symphonies use the same material as ballets that he was writing at the time he wrote the Symphonies-and he revised many of his works, sometimes more than once. With the exception of the Second Piano Concerto (which he revised because the original score and parts were lost) these revisions tended to be directly related to disappointment over the public reaction to the first versions of the score. And although the second versions have tended to be more popular, I would suggest to anyone that he is one composer where the earlier versions are well worth exploring. For one thing, when he revised, the changes were always significant, because they tend to reflect the style he was writing in at the time the revisions were made rather than the time of the original composition.

Perhaps the oddest and most confusing revision was the one made to the piece we will be doing on April 11th-the cello concerto. The original work strides a peculiar time in Prokofiev's life. It was started while he was still living and working in Paris, but by the time it was finished he was a "Soviet composer" living and working in the USSR. The years around the time he began the piece-1932-were not good for his confidence as a composer. Most everything he had composed in the late 20's and early 30's received a pretty lukewarm reception. Looking at his catalog of works, almost nothing he wrote between the Third Piano Concerto (1921) (unless you include the 1923 revision of the Second Piano Concerto) and 1935 is played much today. Of course, beginning in 1935-corresponding with his final decision to return to Russia-he experienced an extraordinary renaissance, and over the next nine years composed a continuous string of masterpieces that have remained in the repertoire.

In the thirties Prokofiev's music underwent a stylistic change as well, moving away from the neo-classical tendencies of the late 20s and early 30s to a broader, more romantic style. The transitional work here is the 2nd Violin Concerto, which successfully sits between these two trends, before the Romantic tendencies take over in works like Romeo and Juliet. The Cello Concerto was started while the composer was still firmly in his neo-classical phase and was finished after his conversion to a new style was complete. Musically, it certainly is more in the earlier style, but one wonders if the conflict inherent in the fact that the Prokofiev of 1938 was very different from the Prokofiev of 1932 played any part in his work on the piece.

Prokofiev seems to have believed in the work, however. He defended it against its detractors, but its lack of success clearly gnawed at him. But when he decided to revise it, it was 1947. He had had a stroke, and the constant fear of official disapproval had sapped his confidence again, and he was starting another phase in his composing life, that of trying to write music that would please that musical illiterate Stalin.

Given this, it is no surprise that the revision he offered was so extensive that it became a completely new piece of music. And it is important to realize that he did view the "Symphony-Concerto op.125" as a totally new piece,not a revision. The strongest evidence for this is that at the premiere it was called "Cello Concerto no.2!" Subsequent to this premiere further revisions were made, which actually distanced the work even further from the first cello concerto (and were, in my opinion, ill-conceived). And this new work became the most popular of all his post-War pieces.

Is this because it is "better" than the earlier Concerto? I think the success of the later piece is because, in Rostropovich, the Symphony-Concerto has had an enormously committed and effective champion, something the Cello Concerto has never had. And if anything, the success of the Symphony-Concerto has doomed the earlier work to further oblivion.

To me the difference between these two compositions illustrates perfectly the tendency for later revisions to depersonalize a work. The Cello Concerto has a most unusual structure, with each movement longer than the next; the orchestral scoring is consistently unusual and very distinctive; and the cello part interacts with the orchestra in way that is very original, as he uses many striking effects derived from the world of chamber music. And for all of its problematic elements, the last movement is full of outrageous and individual touches that are missing or have been smoothed over in the later work.(although I do love the celesta in the Symphony-Concerto). Incidentally, people in Phoenix will have had the rare opportunity to have heard both works live within a short time, as the Phoenix Symphony did the Symphony-Concerto a short while ago.

So come hear us, with guest artist Jeffrey Solow taking on the demanding cello part, April 11 4PM at Scottsdale Center for the Arts. It promises to be a rare treat for all!