Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C (1921)


I gave my ex-GF the Miles Davis autobiography for her birthday because I wanted to read it, and I recently took it back for myself, also because I wanted to read it. In this autobiography, Miles refers to Prokofiev as a "bad motherfucker who was terrible" or something like that, which is absolutely, unequivocally true. This shit is fucking bad.

If you read any of these words that I write in this bloggie, you should understand by now that variation on a theme is one of my favorite things. And hearing the twists and turns that a godhead freak of nature genius like Prokofiev can weave from a single musical idea is unreal. In Andantino con Variazoni, things eventually head down a bleak, somber path before activity returns to the music; this time, the orchestra plays with the theme while the piano dances chromatically in the background. My god does that smell good.

Infinite recombinations mimic the cause and effect decision trees that we use to imagine the future.

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