Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducts music by Prokofiev, Kidane and Nielsen by Prokofiev, Nielsen, Kidane, Fra (2022/2022), Dirigent Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom

Sergei Prokofiev wrote his second piano concerto in 1912-1913 while still a student at the St Petersburg conservatory and premiered it with himself as soloist. The work was dedicated to his friend and fellow student Maximilian Schmidthof who took his own life just as Prokofiev was completing the score. It’s a work which makes fierce technical demands on the soloist - not least in the work’s cadenzas. In neutral Denmark during the First World War, Carl Nielsen, looked on in horror as Europe was torn apart. The composer’s Symphony No. 4 erupts in violence, forcing two sets of drums to tear into one another from either side of a fissile orchestra. Before that we enter an oasis of calm courtesy of composer Daniel Kidane, whose Be Still is a reflection on a common experience of spring 2020 in which time itself appeared to stand still. Nikolai Lugansky’s performance has been postponed and the BBC SO is grateful to Denis Kozhukhin for stepping in at short notice. Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 replaces Medtner’s Piano Concerto No. 2.