When a young Sergei Prokofiev entered the Rubinstein Piano Competition in 1914, he knew he couldn't better his competitors in the standard repertoire. Instead, he decided to play his own technically dazzling Piano Concerto No. 1 — figuring the judges wouldn't be able to tell if he was playing it correctly or not. Prokofiev's gamble paid off: his performance was so riveting that the award panel (who sat with copies of the just-published score in their laps) had no choice but to award the daring young pianist the top prize (we'll hear it tonight with pianist Gary Graffman; George Szell leads the Cleveland Orchestra).
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