I’ve written before about how important building a repertoire is to keeping up with a busy performance schedule, and the wisdom of that advice has been brought, once again, into clear focus by my efforts this week to learn to brand new scores from scratch- Vaughan Williams Symphony no. 5 and the Prokofiev 5^th Piano Concerto. It is taking a lot of hard work and many, many hours….

Embarrassingly, this will be my first Vaughan Williams symphony. I must admit, I’ve gone back and forth on his music over the years. I’ve enjoyed doing all the pieces I’ve conducted so far, and often enjoyed performances of many of his works (and who doesn’t love the Tallis Fantasia), but sometimes, my inner German tells me all this English pastoral, modal watercoloring is a bunch of self-indulgent, long-winded, maudlin crap. Whatever happened to “stiff upper lip” and British stoicism? Doing the Lark Ascending in November was a great educational experience, but learning the 5^th has been a revelation. I have to say- his music brings out the worst in some conductors. I’ve probably slept through several Vaughan Williams symphonies (I’ve considered desperate measures to escape deathly dull performances of the London and Sea symphonies) in concert. As a result, I almost turned this project down, but then, by lucky coincidence, I heard a wonderful performance by James Judd with BBC NOW last year that had sweep, drive and direction. That got me completely psyched to find out what makes a performance of this piece more than pretty. When you strip his music of all the accrued cheap sentimentality and play it with rigor, it’s a whole different world. What an incredibly crafty, beautifully conceived and executed piece, and what an extraordinarily sad slow movement…

Prokofiev’s last piano concerto must be about as far from the lyricism and modality of RVW5 as you can get in the 20^th c. It’s spiky, neurotic, sarcastic and intense music. This will be my 2^nd Prok piano concerto- I did the 2^nd with the same soloist, Daniel de Borah, a couple of years ago. His playing of the 2^nd was so staggering that I was happy to push a little bit to get us a chance to do the 5^th. I think it’s an interesting coincidence that it was specific performances that got me involved with both these projects- I doubt I’d have said yes to RVW5 without James’ performance of it, and it was Daniel’s rock star job on the 2nd Prokofiev that got me interested in doing another Prokofiev with him sooner rather than later.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again- the Prokofiev’s 2^nd Piano Concerto is, bar none, the greatest work for piano and orchestra written in the 20^th c. It towers over all those by Rachmaninoff, Bartok, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Barber, Ravel, Gershwin- you name ‘em. I find it bizarre that it has always been in the shadow of the 3^rd in terms of popularity. I love the 3rd- it’s definitely one of my 5 favorite Prokofiev piano concerti, but the 5th is my new love- it is seriously dangerous music.

While working on the 5^th, I’ve been trying to get to know his piano style a bit better, and it has really hit me that, like Mozart, his piano concertos show a different side of his musical nature than any of this other orchestral works. His personality as a pianist leaps off the page- if you don’t know all 5 of these concerti, you don’t know Prokofiev. In the 5^th, you get the most uncanny sense of what it must be like to be inside the brain of a genius- ideas seem to move and develop at light speed. He’s constantly leaping past you, demanding that you keep up with his logic, his wit.. It’s thrilling but disconcerting, even disorienting (in a good way). The violin and cello concerti just don’t have that quality- they’re virtuosic in a slightly more conventional way.

The RVW5 is just about there, but the Prokofiev still needs more hours (I did some preliminary work on it last summer, but that feels like a different lifetime, and it is very tricy to conduct). I’ve also got a lot of cello practice to do with a trio concert on Thursday. I’ve been nagging friends and colleagues for many years to do the last Tchaikovsky quartet (no. 3 in E flat minor), which I think is one of the great unknown masterpieces of the chamber music literature, so we’ve recruited Suzanne to sit in with us on Thursday night. After so many years of advocating for a performance, I’ve now got to get in shape- conducting Mahler 5 and Beethoven 1 is  not the ideal way to prepare for chamber concerts! Note to self- bow goes in the RIGHT hand.