So like all the good things three month long winter in Brazil ends on this airplane back to Venice. Somehow Prokofiev's second concerto tastes good again. It became one of the pieces I was listening to hundreds of times falling in love with venice this past summer. When I left for Brazil I was not able to listen to it again with much pleasure. Somehow the beach in Rio didnt fit and the Amazon forrest called of all the things for Schostakovitch. Strange, but the half way back through the atlantic my synapsis are firing again to the Prokivievs tune and I feel drunk on it again. Lucky me.
Yesterday in Rio I wined and dined Marco Aurelio after recording his interview, yet even the straight line descendant of a Roman cesar cant make the models wake up in the morning and in effect this morning we didn't shoot the last scene. While eight o'clock quietly drifted by no hookers rang our door.
Ok so now I have to reveal who Marco Aurelio really is. Its funny; as I am typing this secret revealing sentence, the third movement of the Prok. concerto is just beginning laying down oddly perfect dramaturgy of growing anticipation in expectation for some grand resolution, which in case of this score opening comes indeed in form of tour de force cascading octaves landing always on the powerful bottom chord which in context sounds like its made of steel and could very well announce not only an entry of our hero but a whole army of Xerxes. By the way Evegeny Kissin in this recording under Ashkenazy does his usual magic and you are left wondering if Prokofiev really imagined how overwhelmigly beautiful and forceful at the same time this concerto really was. You can draw a charging elephant on the paper an it can be impressive but when one is actually coming down on you, all the fibers in your body...well you can imagine. Although if some of you after reading this pick up this CD and listen to this concerto, do yourself a favor and consider the thrid part as the last part. This way this concerto creates a better whole as the last movement just makes things worse. Here it is - I said it - I'd leave it out Mr. Prokofiev - sometimes less is more. The first three movements seem written with a single pen stroke and form a whole, although one that ends abruptly. But I don't perceive that as a problem. In contrast the factual last (4th) movement feels for the first half of it forced, as if it was written because it would be well seen if somehting else was there but the thematic material doesnt have anything to do witht he first three parts and seems oddly detached. All that till the heartfelt cadenza happening midway to the end but then the out of place music returns, ending the movement in the rondo form but still with nothing in common with three earlier parts. I say in this case castration is the way to go.
Oh and last but not least this concerto, especially the third movement, is a fantastic sex music - that of course if you can take the intensity which will blow your senses to the orbit. This reminds me of so many guys who privately had sex with me and remember it with details after years. I of course dont remember them but when they come and tell me what a feat this was but they forget that sex was good, maybe even mindblowing for them but a lot of that manipulation was created by classical music blasting on the speakers on my playroom in just the right moments. Drugs for sex can be good but classical music can is the most potent amplifier of all.
The best is that for me music, particular fragments of it can be on occasion the cue-cards for my brain to unlock the old registries of memory. So I listen to the particular assage and like a keycode it unlocks the smell and color of early morning fish market in venice. For an instant you're transported to the place and can hear the burgundy courtains flaping in the wind, smell the fish water mixed with sparkly white crushed ice standine geverywhere in alloy basins. And for a second you're there for real more then you are here. This is one of the magical aspects of music and those miraculous journeys in time and place dont only apply to fishmarkets - imagine what other memory in a mind of a pornstar could be triggered.
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