Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 3 March 1916

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text excerpt

In the evening I went to the 'Contemporaries' concert at which Medtner was playing his own works. Suvchinsky, a broad smile on his face, put out feelers about my performing for them next season, even if the repertoire had to be confined to old works. I was evasive, stopping short of saying 'yes'. Medtner played his new Sonata, Op. 30, excessively Medtnerish with nothing particularly new in it, but good all the same and I would like to play it myself. But precisely that dangerous inclination to play it oneself is the point: Medtner's tragedy is that just as his music is enjoyable to play for oneself, so it can be monotonous and boring to hear played on the concert platform. This is exactly the experience I had when I was listening to his Sonata-Ballade. I am generally of the opinion that after his core work, his E minor Sonata, he, like Schumann in his later years, withdrew to deeply into the depths of his own psyche, a process accompanied by an impoverishment of his purely musical powers. Some of his songs are extraordinarily beautiful, but he is not truly a lyric composer and texts do not inspire him.

excerpt from 'Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 3 March 1916' pp. 96 (198 words)

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