Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 3 & 4 Olli Mustonen

• 1 I. Andante - Allegro 09:29
• 2 II. Tema con variazioni 09:31
• 3 III. Allegro ma non troppo 09:43
• 4 I. Allegro brioso 06:20
• 5 II. Andante assai 03:59
• 6 III. Allegro scherzando 04:08
• 7 I. Vivace 04:33
• 8 II. Andante 12:19
• 9 III. Moderato 08:24
• 10 IV. Vivace 01:39
• Total Runtime 01:10:05

Info for Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 3 & 4

Ondine is proud to present the first disc of Sergei Prokofiev’s (1891–1953) piano concertos with pianist Olli Mustonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu.

Prokofiev’s Piano Concertos are among 20th century masterpieces. The composer himself was a skilled pianist and the works are marked with technical brilliance. The young composer made himself a major coup at the premiere of his youthful 1st Piano Concerto in 1914 and confirmed his reputation as an enfant terrible. It took several years for Prokofiev to complete his 3rd Piano Concerto – the most popular of his Piano Concertos. The work received its world premiere in Chicago in 1921 and soon the work turned into a major success also in Europe. Prokofiev’s 4th Piano Concerto (for the left hand) is slightly more austere in style and has remained in the shadow of the two other concertos included in this disc. He wrote the 4th concerto in 1931 for Paul Wittgenstein, but the work remained unperformed until 1956.

Pianist Olli Mustonen has worked with most of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and The Royal Concertgebouw, partnering conductors such as Ashkenazy, Barenboim, Dutoit, Eschenbach, Harnoncourt, Masur and Nagano. As a recitalist, he plays in all the significant musical capitals, including Mariinsky Theatre St Petersburg, Wigmore Hall, Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Symphony Center Chicago, New York Zankel Hall and Sydney Opera House. His many albums for Ondine include Respighi’s Concerto in modo Misolidio with Sakari Oramo and the Finnish Radio Symphony and a critically acclaimed disc of Scriabin’s solo piano music.

The recent recordings by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu on Ondine have been a fruitful collaboration gathering excellent reviews in the international press.

Olli Mustonen, piano
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu, conductor

Olli Mustonen
has a unique place on today’s music scene both as a pianist, conductor and composer. As a pianist, he has challenged and fascinated audiences throughout Europe and America with his brilliant technique and startling originality. At the heart of his piano playing Mustonen has a deeply held conviction that each performance must have the freshness of a first performance and this tenacious spirit of discovery leads him to explore many areas of repertoire beyond the established canon.

As a soloist, Mustonen has worked with most of the world’s leading orchestras, partnering conductors such as Ashkenazy, Barenboim, Blomstedt, Boulez, Chung, Dutoit, Eschenbach, Gergiev, Harnoncourt, Masur, Nagano, salonen and saraste. Mustonen is also increasingly making his mark as a conductor with recent highlights including leading the staatskapelle Weimar, West Australian symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne symphony Orchestra. Recent conducting engagements include a return to the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, Northern sinfonia and Tchaikovsky symphony Orchestra and soloist appearances with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev.

Olli Mustonen’s recording catalogue is typically broad ranging and distinctive. His recording for Decca of Preludes by shostakovich and Alkan received the Edison Award and Gramophone Award for the Best instrumental Recording. in 2002 Mustonen signed a recording contract with Ondine, with whom he has released several albums, including the Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos with Tapiola sinfonietta.

Alexander Scriabin’s
creative career described a brilliant but tragic trajectory. He began as a pianistic prodigy in an elaborated Chopinesque style, as exemplified by his early Piano Concerto, sonatas and etudes. But his development was prodigious, and by the start of the 20th century he was capitalising with truly Russian fervour on the influence of Wagner – and the imaginative stimulus of the grandiose esoteric beliefs he was developing from Nietzsche and Theosophy – to create a personal language heady and erotically voluptuous in its chromatic freedom, extravagant and flamboyant in its gestures. This new language reached its apotheosis in the orchestral Poème de l’extase and Promethée and the heaven-storming Fifth, aloofly hermetic sixth, and triumphant seventh (White Mass) Piano sonatas. These latter works, however, already show a trend towards concision (they are all in one movement) and to allusive but logical development out of germinal motifs and chordal structures – characteristics which scriabin continued to explore and refine in the ever more inward, mystically self-communing piano works of his last years. in scriabin, virtuosity is innate in the musical ideas themselves: it is the medium of communication with the divine, the portal to Nirvana.

Apart from his sonatas scriabin devoted himself primarily to the same lyric, miniature forms that Chopin had established and practised: nocturnes, preludes, impromptus, mazurkas, etudes. But through his swift stylistic development he transformed these genres into something rich and strange – a process that can be traced, for example, in his complete etudes. The great etude cycles, from Chopin through Liszt to Debussy and Ligeti, always exhibit a two-fold aspect: on the one hand the exploration and mastery of specific technical issues, and on the other the making of enthralling, poetic music out of that process of exploration. scriabin’s etudes, of which he composed 26 in all, display this characteristic duality.

Booklet for Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 3 & 4