I spent much of this evening listening to Scriabin and Prokofiev, two sensational 20th-century modern but relatively accessible Russian composers. They can be super fun, though sometimes difficult. The piece below is the fourth movement of Prokofiev’s second piano sonata. It’s a piece I have enjoyed trying to play, and this movement is my favorite. It is just so much fun! Now, of course, I cannot play it this fast or well, but it has lots of patterns, so it’s not that crazy to understand, it’s just hard to get your fingers to move that fast consistently.
The basic organization is Crazy – Beautiful – Crazy, a classic ABA sonata structure. The recap (crazy #2) starts to fragment the themes and intersplice them (something my favorite composer Nikolai Medtner does a lot of). This piece fulfills the two main criteria I tend to like in music: beauty and technical complexity. It should keep your left and right brains active. If it feels too nuts, wait for the 1:45 mark, where the pretty stuff starts. I like to play that section.
Just got my piano tuned yesterday, so now I’m reconnecting to the instrument again!
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