Prokofiev composed two violin concertos and two cello concertos—the same numbers as his compatriot Shostakovich. But Prokofiev’s two cello concertos are closely related to the point where the second, the Sinfonia Concertante, is largely a reworking of the first. The last few years of his life brought him little joy and little success. The severity of Stalin’s clampdown in 1948 affected him profoundly, and his health was failing. He retreated from Moscow as much as possible, and he lost some of his closest friends. While the music he composed from 1949 to 1952, including the Seventh Symphony, lacks the sparkle and ingenuity of his earlier masterpieces and has not been much played, the Sinfonia Concertante for cello and orchestra is an exception to this pale picture, and its success may be attributed to the fact that its chief ideas were formulated in the First Concerto, Op. 58, finished in 1938.

This earlier work belongs to a sunnier period of his life, when Prokofiev was moving between Western Europe and the Soviet Union, preparing to settle in his homeland after many years abroad. This is the period of Romeo and Juliet, Alexander Nevsky, and Peter and the Wolf. A performance of the First Concerto by the emerging Mstislav Rostropovich, whose phenomenal artistry on the cello was recognized with the 1950 Stalin Prize, inspired Prokofiev to rework the 1938 composition. A second version was produced under the title Concerto No. 2 in January 1952 and performed in Moscow the following month. It was published with a new title, Symphony-Concerto (or more commonly Sinfonia Concertante), and played by Rostropovich all over the world. Prokofiev himself died a year after the premiere, coincidentally on the same day as his tormentor Stalin.

The three movements are all expansive, with a wide variety of themes and speeds, justifying the symphonic implications of the title. The solo part calls for a player of exceptional technique and musicality, sometimes to the point that Rostropovich asked the composer to provide easier alternatives for lesser players. These alternatives, needless to say, are ignored by today’s many gifted performers.

The slow movement comes first, with a broad andante tempo and a motif of four rising notes clearly stated at the outset. This theme is also prominent in the ballet Romeo and Juliet, whose mood and lyrical tone is often echoed here. A striking later section has soft high strings descending along a steady scale while the basses tread a rising scale to meet them.

The second movement is the longest, combining the functions of a conventional first movement and scherzo, with which it begins calling for energetic action from the soloist. The brass intrude rudely from time to time. Eventually the pace slackens and the soloist’s elegant rhapsodizing leads to a cadenza. This gets gradually faster and leads naturally back to a return of the jumpy music from the beginning for an extended review of earlier themes and more high-wire display from the cello.

The finale has the character of variations on a broad, lyrical theme presented at the start by the soloist. Its middle section is announced by the bassoon in its jauntiest mood. The main theme returns like a chorale, and then the celesta duets charmingly with the cello. At the end the cello ascends the heights, in Rostropovich’s words, “as if spiraling up to the very summit of a domed roof,” stopped only by the thumps of the timpani.

On one occasion when Rostropovich was playing the Sinfonia Concertante in Moscow, Shostakovich noticed that the timpanist was a one-legged war veteran, who stood with no artificial leg or crutch. After the concert Shostakovich cried, “Slavka, how that one-legged guy thumped his drum!” Years later Shostakovich would write his First Cello Concerto for Rostropovich and would conclude it with seven bangs on the timpani. The Sinfonia Concertante was one of the younger composer’s favorite works, to the point that his recording of it was, according to Rostropovich, completely worn down: “It only emitted a kind of hiss.”

—Hugh Macdonald