Prokofiev Sonata n. 7 in B flat major op. 83 | Yuki Yoshimi - Queen Elisabeth Competition 2021 

It’s the hardest sonata.

@@georgiachaney5912 well that wouldn't be a negative for me if so.

@@georgiachaney5912 The 8th one is even harder

Often I feel that the Precipitato is played as if it were an encore - after the hyper-complex first and second movements.. But that seems not to be what is meant. Think of it this way: how can that oddly lilting rhythm (2+3+2) with odd accentuations all over the place be played “clean”, mechanical, as an Ostinato or a Toccata - and especially, “as fast as possible” as quite a few pianists attempt to do? It is NOT a Prestissimo or Vivacissimo. So what IS meant. To precipitate means to hurl - and to precipitate oneself (or in the French Prokofiev spoke quite well: se précipiter) means to precipitate oneself headlong - from a tower or a cliff. As in a suicide attempt, or when one is suicided by Stalin’s secret police. That implies that the movement should be plaid not mechanically but as if the mechanism were breaking. When one interprets it thusly, the logic of its concluding the dynamic of the two other movements becomes clear. It is not futurist motorism or machinist at work but expressionism (through a futurist kaleidoscope) - or the despairing Neo-romanticism as one can hear in the roughly contemporaneous Fifth and and especially Sixth symphonies.. I recommend you to listen to Alexander Malofeev’s rendering of it - as an encore on RU-vid during the 2019 China competition. Expressionistic it is - as if played by Pogorelich (he plays the 6th, not the 7th).. He is clearly still exploring the possibilities of doing it that way, but it is endlessly more interesting and - and that is what you are looking for, I think, mr Davis - itegratedi with the statements of the previous movements. Malofeev brings Prokofiev’s subconscious to the fore.

@@michelleclerc3857 Stop making sense