3URNRÀHY·V Symphony No. 2

BACKGROUND TO…

When Prokofiev first settled in Paris in 1923, the French capital was under the sway of Stravinsky and Les six. Prokofiev’s first Parisian success was the revised version of his Piano Concerto

No. 2, which he himself performed in a concert conducted by Koussevitzky in 1924. Premiered in that same concert was Honegger’s Pacific 231, which provoked Prokofiev into writing his Second Symphony (1925). Declaring he would compose a work of ‘iron and steel’, Prokofiev based its structure on that of Beethoven’s last piano sonata – a sonata-form first movement followed by a set of variations on a theme.