Sergei Prokofiev on Music Theory Print

Alexander Nevsky (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

The score was Prokofiev’s third for a film, following Lieutenant Kijé (1934) and The Queen of Spades (1936). Prokofiev was heavily involved not just with the composition, but with the recording as well. He experimented with different microphone distances in order to achieve the desired sound. Horns meant to represent the Teutonic Knights, for instance, were played close enough to the microphones to produce a crackling, distorted sound. The brass and choral groups were recorded in different studios and the separate pieces were later mixed. Prokofiev employed different sections of the orchestra, as well as different compositional styles, to evoke the necessary imagery. For instance, the Teutonic Knights (seen as the adversary) are represented by heavy brass instruments, playing discordant notes in a martial style. The sympathetic Russian forces are represented predominantly by folk-like instruments such as woodwind and strings, often playing quasi-folksong style music.

Betrothal in a Monastery

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Performance history#

The opera was first performed in the United States (in English) in New York on June 1, 1948. The opera was first performed in the United Kingdom (in Russian) in London on May 5, 1963. In recent years, the opera has been performed in 1989 at the Wexford Festival, in 2006 at the Glyndebourne Festival and at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Spain in 2008, at Staatsoper Berlin, in 2019.

Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction#

In ten contrasting movements, the cantata relates the story of the Bolshevik Revolution and the birth of the Soviet Union, from the battle for the Winter Palace in 1917, through the suffering of 1918 and Lenin’s funeral in 1924, to the building of factories and collective farms in the early thirties, and the final consolidation of Stalin’s control over the country with his new constitution of 1936. Begun by Prokofiev in 1936 on a generous commission from the All-Union Radio Committee and Prokofiev’s friend Boris Gusman, it was finished the following summer. Prokofiev expected it to be part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917. Prokofiev is said to have performed the entire piece himself when auditioning the piece for the celebration, both singing the choral parts and playing the piano. Even though he utilized texts for the piece published by Marx, Lenin and Stalin, Prokofiev was not able to win political approval of his gigantic cantata. In fact, Platon Kerzhentsev ripped into Prokofiev, accusing him of “…taking texts that belong to the people and setting them to … incomprehensible music”. Nevertheless, Prokofiev fought to have his cantata performed, writing numerous letters and attempting to hold rehearsals. Unfortunately, these attempts were in vain. Because it did not receive official approval, Prokofiev was only paid 25% of the commission promised. Upon the première of “Songs of Our Days” in 1938, Prokofiev hoped that the success of the piece would “soften hard hearts”. However, the cantata never received official approval during Prokofiev’s lifetime. The cantata was forgotten until 1966, when it finally premiered, being conducted by Kirill Kondrashin. However, the piece suffered from censorship. Stalin had died in 1953, and had been publicly denounced. Through the de-stalinization of the piece, the two movements “The Pledge” and “Constitution” were completely removed. Still a third movement, the 9th, “Symphony”, was heavily modified. Having removed the finale of the piece, Kondrashin finished the piece by reprising the second movement, “The Philosophers”. Prokofiev would never get to hear his piece. He died 13 years before the first performance. Previous examples of this type of Communist cantata include Shock Brigade of the World Proletariat (1931–32) by Alexander Krein and To the Proletariat and Agricultural Symphony (1923) by Alexander Kastalsky.

Cello Sonata (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The sonata is structured in three movements: A typical performance lasts for about 25 minutes.

Performance#

The work was premiered on 1 March 1950, in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with Rostropovich and pianist Sviatoslav Richter. In his memoirs Richter wrote: We gave the first performance of Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata. Before playing it in concert, we had to perform it at the Composer’s Union, where these gentlemen decided the fate of all new works. During this period more than any other, they needed to work out whether Prokofiev had produced a new masterpiece or, conversely, a piece that was ‘hostile to the spirit of the people.’ Three months later, we had to play it again at a plenary session of all the composers who sat on the Radio Committee, and it wasn’t until the following year that we were able to perform it in public, in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on March 1, 1950. In his diary Miaskovsky hailed the occasion: “Yesterday Rostropovich and Richter openly played the Cello Sonata by Prokofiev in concert - a miraculous piece of music!”

Chout

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Chout was Prokofiev’s first completed ballet score for Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev had first commissioned Ala and Lolli but rejected the score submitted by Prokofiev. Although the composer recast some of the music as the Scythian Suite, the projected ballet never saw the light of day. Instead, Diaghilev asked Prokofiev to write a ballet based on a folk tale recorded by Alexander Afanasyev. The story had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario. The story involves seven buffoons who all murder their wives after being told by an eighth buffoon that he has killed his own wife and brought her back to life with a magic whip and promises to do the same for them. When he fails to deliver on his promise, the other buffoons seek revenge. The principal buffoon is forced to disguise himself as a woman and is chosen for marriage by a wealthy merchant. He escapes after swindling the merchant out of 300 roubles. Prokofiev wrote the score in 1915. Although Diaghilev was again not happy with the music, this time he was prepared to work with the composer to recast it into six scenes and retain the best parts of the music already written. He also wanted new entr’actes to make the music play continuously, which Prokofiev did, but not until 1920. In the meantime, the ballet was not produced. He revised the score while staying at Mantes-sur-Seine near Paris. He wrote the piano reduction while travelling by ship to the United States and finished the full score in early 1921 after his return to France. He played through the score for Stravinsky in Paris, who liked it. Shortly afterwards, Diaghilev also approved the changes. Over 40 per cent of the original score was either deleted or rewritten, and the required additional entr’actes were composed. The first performance of the ballet was given by the Ballets Russes on 17 May 1921, at the Théâtre Municipal de la Gaîté, Paris, with choreography by Fyodor Slavinsky and supervision by Mikhail Larionov. The orchestra was conducted by the composer. It was fairly well received, however the London premiere on 9 June was bitterly attacked by audiences and critics alike.

Cinderella (Ashton)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Plot outline#

Ashton’s Cinderella is his own realised dream of a Petipa ballet and the ballet itself enacts the realisation of dreams, notably Cinderella’s own. When we first see her she is a demi-caractere dancer dreaming of being a ballerina—that seems to be the balletic point of her solo with the broomstick in the kitchen—and it is as a ballerina that she magically enters the ballroom, stepping en pointe down the stairs and advancing in pas de bourree to the front of the stage. Back in the kitchen she recalls the slipper (or rather the pointe shoe) that she carries in her apron; the shoe is the clue to her dream and persuades her it was true. The Prince finds Cinderella, but in his arms she discovers her own identity as a ballerina and her dream of herself has been realised. Cinderella’s mice design the gown.

Cinderella (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Story#

Act I Cinderella, a young woman whose domineering stepmother forces her to act as a servant in her own home, helps her stepmother and two stepsisters to prepare for the Spring Ball, at which it is rumoured that the Prince will choose his bride-to-be. As the two stepsisters work together to produce a new shawl, they get into an argument over who will wear it, and end up tearing it in two through their bickering. The pair storm off, while the step-mother orders Cinderella to clear up the remnants and finish her chores, as her father returns home from business. Since her father’s remarriage, Cinderella has had to sleep by the kitchen fireplace, leaving her nothing to wear but rags covered in ashes. Her father has never moved past the grief of his first wife’s death, and though he is concerned for his only daughter Cinderella, he is just as much under the stepmother’s control as Cinderella herself is. Their brief peace is interrupted, however, as the stepmother and the two stepsisters reenter and begin ordering them about. During supper, a beggar woman turns up, asking for shelter. The two stepsisters and the stepmother try to chase her off, but Cinderella offers her a place by the kitchen fire and an old pair of slippers. The beggar thanks her for her kindness and departs, leaving the preparations for the ball to resume. After choosing dresses and a quick dancing lesson, the family finally sets off for the night with the father reluctantly in tow, leaving Cinderella behind. Although lonely at first, she cheers herself up by dancing with her broom, imagining the Prince himself has asked her for a dance. She is surprised, however, when the old beggar woman appears out of nowhere, wishing to return the slippers with her thanks. To Cinderella’s amazement, the shoes have been transformed into dancing slippers of glass. The old beggar woman throws off her disguise and reveals herself as Cinderella’s fairy godmother, come to grant her wish of going to the ball. Summoning the fairies of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter for assistance, she turns Cinderella’s rags into a beautiful dress, a pumpkin and mice into a carriage and horses, and grasshoppers and dragonflies into a retinue of footmen. As she is about to leave, however, the fairy godmother warns her that the magic will only last until midnight, at which time the spell will break, and everything will revert to its original form. Only the glass slippers will remain as a gift for her kindness. She then summons twelve dwarfs, who will appear to repeat her message if she has not left by midnight. With this warning in mind, Cinderella departs for the ball. Act II The Spring Ball is in full swing, with guests arriving from all over the kingdom and beyond to dance and pay respect to the Prince. The two stepsisters attempt to win favour with the royal court by showing off their dancing skills, but have less than successful results, much to their mother’s dismay. The Prince then joins the celebrations, but finding state events such as the Spring Ball dull, and being reluctant to enter a marriage without love, he declines any offers for a dance, particularly in the case of the obnoxious step-sisters. Cinderella arrives at the palace, transformed beyond recognition into a beautifully dressed princess. The Prince, along with everyone else, is entranced by her beauty and charm, and for the first time, he asks for a dance. As the evening passes, Cinderella quickly becomes beloved by the entire court for her graciousness and charm, and the enamoured Prince spends the entire evening by her side. When refreshments are served, he gives her the honour of taking one of three oranges, a delicacy imported to the kingdom from a far-off land. Cinderella offers the other two oranges to her two stepsisters, who are so flattered by the attention that they do not recognize the beautiful stranger as their stepsister. The Prince takes Cinderella out to the royal gardens for an evening walk, where they dance and proclaim the love blossoming between them. As they return to the ballroom for the next waltz, Cinderella has completely forgotten about the time in her happiness. However, at the first stroke of midnight, the twelve dwarfs spring from the great palace clock and remind Cinderella of her fairy godmother’s warning. Terrified of being unmasked as a lowly servant in rags, she flees from the ballroom to the astonishment of the other guests. Though the Prince pursues her, she vanishes into the night moments before the spell breaks, losing one of her glass slippers in her haste and panic. The Prince is heartbroken at the thought of losing his love so soon after discovering her, but upon finding the lost slipper, he vows not to rest until he is once again reunited with her. Act III The morning after the ball, the Prince summons every shoemaker in the kingdom, in order to find out who the slipper was made for. However, none of them claim to have crafted the shoe, or sold it to anybody recently, and he concludes that the princess must be from a foreign land. His desperate search brings him first to the Mediterranean, then to the Orient, and lands further beyond. After travelling across the world and meeting various beautiful princesses with no success, the Prince begins to search his own kingdom, trying the slipper on every maiden who attended the ball. Back at Cinderella’s home, love has allowed the Prince to defy the laws of time and space; though she is only awakening the morning after the ball, he has already traveled the world and back again in search of his lost love. Upon waking, Cinderella initially believes that the events of the previous night were only a dream. As she relives some of the dances of the ball, she discovers the remaining glass slipper and realizes that it was all true. At breakfast, the two stepsisters reminisce about the ball, and argue about who made the greater impression on the Prince at the ball. Their fighting is interrupted when the father and the stepmother hurry in with the news that the Prince is on his way to their house, desperately trying a glass slipper on every girl he encounters. Upon his arrival, he tries the slipper on the two stepsisters, to no avail. The stepmother, however, demands to be given a chance and tries to force her foot into the shoe, ordering Cinderella to help her. As she bends down to assist, the remaining slipper falls from her pocket and the Prince finally recognizes Cinderella for who she is. As Cinderella successfully tries on both glass slippers, her stepfamily beg for her forgiveness, which she happily bestows upon them. Overjoyed to have rediscovered each other, Cinderella and the Prince are then transported away to a secret garden by the fairy godmother, where they confess their love for one another and are happily married.

Flute Sonata (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The Flute Sonata in D was completed in the summer of 1943. At that same time, Prokofiev was working on music for “Ivan the terrible”. The flute sonata in D was first performed in Moscow, Russia on December 7, 1943 by Nicolai Kharkovsky (flute) and Sviatoslav Richter (piano). It was later transcribed for violin in 1944, by the composer with the help of violinist David Oistrakh, as Op. 94a. The violin version was first performed by David Oistrakh (violin) and Lev Oborin, Piano, on June 17, 1944.

Four Pieces for Piano, Op. 32 (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The set was written during Prokofiev’s stay in the United States, largely to the composer would earn some money while he was waiting for the delayed premiere of The Love for Three Oranges. It was in this period that Prokofiev also wrote Tales of an Old Grandmother, Op. 31, as he needed quick and easily sold pieces that would provide steady income. His publisher, Carl Fischer, was happy with his Op. 31 and asked him to write more pieces for piano. Prokofiev approached the dances in the set with disdain, and frequently complained about how boring they were in letters, saying: “I would much prefer to be working on the opera”, “I would not be writing any of this rubbish if I did not need the money,” and “There’s nothing good in any of these dances”. They were all composed between October 9 and 18, 1918, while he was battling a minor flu. On the day they were finished, he wrote: “They are a little boring. I have no particular preference for one over another”. The dances were eventually not published by Fischer, but by A. Gutheil, Koussevitzky’s Russian Music Editions, in Moscow in 1922. The set premiered in New York City on March 30, 1919, with Prokofiev at the piano. Despite how dismissive Prokofiev initially was about the pieces, they ended up gaining popularity over time. Prokofiev himself performed the gavotte for recording at the His Master’s Voice studios in Paris on March 4, 1935, and violinist Jascha Heifetz even wrote an arrangement of the same gavotte for violin and piano and turned it into a short showpiece for duet.

Four Pieces for Piano, Op. 4 (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Prokofiev’s Op. 4 was one of the compositions that were born out of his frustration with his teacher Anatoly Lyadov from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. During his involvement with the “Evenings of Contemporary Music”, a series of concerts about contemporary music hosted by Alfred Nourok and Walter Nouvel, beginning in 1908, Prokofiev presented several of his newest piano works, including the pieces that would become Op. 4, composed in 1908 but later revised for publication between 1910 and 1912. These performances, given alongside other early sets such as Op. 2 and Op. 3, which are also entitled Four Pieces for Piano, played an important role in establishing his reputation as a bold young modernist. Prokofiev cited the Suggestion diabolique retrospectively as a notable part of his search to find “a language in which to express strong emotions”. and has been republished by many other publishers, such as Muzgiz, Anton J. Benjamin, and Dover Publications.

Ivan the Terrible (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

Sergei Prokofiev composed the first part of the film score for Ivan the Terrible for Sergei Eisenstein’s 1945 film Ivan the Terrible, based on the life of Ivan the Terrible. The project was Prokofiev’s second collaboration with Eisenstein, the first being the popular Alexander Nevsky (1938). The majority of the non-liturgical song texts were written by Vladimir Lugovskoy, who collaborated with Prokofiev on the texts for Alexander Nevsky. Prokofiev also composed the score for its 1958 sequel. A planned third part of a trilogy was not performed.

Le pas d'acier (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origin#

The ballet was commissioned by impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who had been greatly impressed by the exhibition in Paris in 1925 of Russian contemporary artists at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, and was originally intended to “celebrate Soviet industrialization.” Prokofiev wrote the score, based on a scenario by the Constructivist artist Georgi Yakulov and himself, in 1925–1926, much of it during his tour of the United States. Prokofiev wrote that his music represented “a move towards a Russian musical language, not that of the Fairy Tales of the folklorist Afanasyev, but one which could describe contemporary life. …It was a decisive step leading me towards chromaticism and diatonics … A whole series of themes is composed solely for the white keys.” The original scenario was titled Ursignol, and was approved by Diaghilev in the autumn of 1925. It appears however that over the next two years the story-line was changed, against Yakulov’s wishes, as Diaghilev made preparations for the first production. The original scenario was rooted in scenes of Soviet life, of which Yakulov had experience (but the émigrés Prokofiev and Diaghilev did not), involving speculators, sailors and workers, and with scenes in a station, a market and a factory, centered on life in the early Soviet Union. The factory scene features machines and sprocketed wheels as the setting for a danced romance between a sailor and a young girl worker. It is interesting that in the factory scene the chromatic ostinato figure of the viola is nearly the same as the one of Mosolov’s contemporary “Iron Foundry”.

Lieutenant Kijé (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Expatriate composer#

Sergei Prokofiev graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1914, having by then acquired an early reputation as an avant-garde composer. His biographer Israel Nestyev asserts that the Second Piano Concerto of 1913 was “Prokofiev’s ticket of admission to the highest circles of Russian modernism”. When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Prokofiev avoided military service, possibly because he was the only son of a widow. During the war years he continued to compose; in May 1918, in the period of upheaval following the October Revolution and the beginning of the Civil War, Prokofiev obtained permission from the Bolshevik government to travel abroad, and left for America. His biographers have maintained that he did not “flee the country”; rather that he embarked on a concert tour, which he extended when he became convinced that his career prospects would be better served in America and western Europe. He remained in America until March 1922; he then stayed briefly in the small German town of Ettal before moving to Paris in October 1923. Rather than treating Prokofiev as a fugitive or exile, the Moscow government chose to consider him as a general ambassador for Soviet culture, and the composer returned the compliment by registering in France as a citizen of the Soviet Union, the new state formed on 30 December 1922 by Russia and the states of the former Russian Empire. Prokofiev expressed support for the political developments in what he still considered his homeland, and was keen to resume contacts there. He was accorded VIP status when he paid his first visit to the Soviet Union in 1927, for a recital tour. Further trips followed, and in 1930 Prokofiev took a flat in Moscow, although Paris remained his principal home. During this period of rapprochement he consciously sought to simplify his musical language into a form that he believed would be consistent with the official Soviet concept of art.

Maddalena (opera)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

Although Prokofiev had already written four operas (the earliest being The Giant which he composed at the age of eight and was written down by the composer’s mother), Maddalena is the first of his works in this genre to which he gave an opus number (op. 13). The opera was written in the summer of 1911 while Prokofiev was still a student at Saint Petersburg Conservatory and abandoned with only one of its four scenes orchestrated. The plot centres on a torrid love triangle in Venice in the fifteenth century. Prokofiev wrote in his autobiography that ’the action abounded in conflicts, love, treachery and murder’ but added that ‘Baron Lieven’ was ‘more charming in appearance than talented in dramaturgy’. It was to wait 70 years for its premiere.

Music for Children (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Prokofiev completed Music for Children in 1935, inspired by his former stays in Paris, in the same year as his ballet Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64, and his Six Mass Songs, Op. 66. The work was written during a period when Prokofiev was preparing for his return to the Soviet Union, which he completed in 1936. The twelve pieces were first published in 1935 in Berlin by Éditions Russes de Musique. Prokofiev himself performed the premiere on April 11, 1936, in Moscow.

On Guard for Peace

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The years spanning World War II and the immediate postwar were the most successful of Prokofiev’s career. According to Sviatoslav Richter, Prokofiev “tirelessly replenished the treasury of the latest classical works” during this period. He was widely regarded as the leading composer of the Soviet Union and a living classic. By 1947, the number of distinctions and prizes he earned were unmatched in the history of Soviet music, on top of which were several foreign honors, including a gold medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society. His Sixth Symphony was premiered to widespread acclaim that year and was the last time any of his new music succeeded without need of outside intervention during the composition process. On January 5, 1948, Joseph Stalin and members of the Politburo attended the Bolshoi Theatre for a performance of the opera The Great Friendship by the Georgian composer Vano Muradeli. The opera outraged Stalin for reasons that remain undetermined. He immediately directed Andrei Zhdanov to investigate the opera, which led to a wider campaign against musical formalism, during which Prokofiev emerged as one of the main targets. On February 10, Prokofiev and five other Soviet composers were censured by the Politburo in their 1948 Anti-Formalist Resolution on Music, which resulted in the banning of a number of his works, including previously lauded scores such as the Sixth and Eighth piano sonatas. With his music no longer performed or published in the Eastern Bloc, Prokofiev and his wife, Mira, had to rely on charity from friends in order to live. He was unable to maintain the loan that allowed him to purchase his dacha in and by August 1948, he had incurred a personal debt of R180,000. According to Marina Frolova-Walker, the punishment meted out to Prokofiev was arguably the harshest of all the censured composers, with its “devastating effect” leading to the “catastrophic deterioration of his health”. He was out of official favor for a longer period of time than the other composers named in the resolution, an outcome which the failed reception of his opera The Story of a Real Man aggravated. On July 7, 1949, Prokofiev had a stroke as a result of stress and chronic hypertension. Despite his declining health, Prokofiev insisted to his doctors, who strictly regimented his activities, that he be allowed more time to compose. One of them eventually gave way to the composer’s demands: One cannot keep an artist from creating … the music will live in his soul, and the impossibility of writing it out will only worsen his moral and psychological state: “Let him live a shorter life, but as he wishes”. Prokofiev’s health partially recovered in late 1949.

On the Dnieper

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario who had led Ballets Russes to distinguished success, died suddenly in 1929, hence ending Prokofiev’s collaboration with the troupe. (The Prodigal Son was the last such collaboration.) Seeing the success of the work, the Paris Opéra commissioned Prokofiev to write another ballet. Serge Lifar, formerly a close associate with Diaghilev, was responsible for creating the setting and choreography. However, he did not place any significance to the scenario. Rather, the ballet was created as a sequence of dances. On the Dnieper was the result of this collaboration. Lifar, in his 1965 book La danse, said that he was disappointed with Prokofiev’s score. Lifar claimed to have been inspired by Russian folkdance, but acknowledges that critics found his own choreography insufficiently Russian. Preparations for the ballet were marked by the sudden withdrawal of Olga Spessivtseva who was to have had the leading female role. Spessivsteva had had a series of successes with Lifar at the Paris Opera Ballet (Promethee, Giselle) and had unrequited feelings for him. In his book The Three Graces: Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spessivtseva (1959) Lifar describes how their personal situation came to a head during rehearsals. “The two heroines of this ballet were named Natasha and Olga. I have already mentioned the friendship which had sprung up at this time between Natasha P… Natalie Paley and myself. It was, therefore, perhaps a little cruel to give these two names, Natasha and Olga, to the heroines. Be that as it may, the role of Olga was allotted to Spessivtseva, while the male part, Serge, was to be interpreted by me. The crisis came when, at one of the rehearsals, Spessivtseva suddenly realized that it was with Natasha … that in pursuance of the plot, I was to find happiness, whereas the leading, and, from the choreographic point of view, the most important role had been allotted to her, Olga! This crisis, as always with her, developed with the speed of lightning. Just as I had announced at rehearsal, that this was where my pas de deux tendre with Natasha would begin, Spessivtseva all of a sudden made a dash for the window. In one bound I reached her, but, by that time she was already through it. I just managed to clutch her arm. My pianist, Leonide Gontcharov, who was hard on my heels, sprang to my assistance. Olga hung there, suspended from our arms, thirty feet above the Place Charles-Garnier. With great difficulty we managed to drag her back. She fought, bit and scratched in an effort to break free … Next day she did not turn up at rehearsal, but sent word to me that she had left the Opera forever.”

Opus 19/The Dreamer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Production#

Opus 19/The Dreamer was created for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride, and features an ensemble of 12 dancers. As the lead man is on stage most of the time, it is a challenge to the dancer’s stamina. The Pacific Northwest Ballet had also performed the ballet.

Overture on Hebrew Themes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Prokofiev arrived in New York in September 1918. Early in 1919, he was commissioned by a Russian sextet called the Zimro Ensemble, which had just arrived in America from the Far East on a world tour sponsored by the Russian Zionist Organization. The members played the instruments in this work’s instrumentation, and were led by their clarinetist Simeon Bellison, who was trained in Moscow and had been principal clarinettist of the Mariinsky Theatre from 1915. (Bellison would soon become principal clarinet with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.) They gave Prokofiev a notebook of Jewish folksongs, though the melodies Prokofiev chose have never been traced to any authentic sources. It has been suggested that Bellison had actually composed them himself in the Jewish style . The other members of the ensemble were Jacob Mestechkin, first violin, G. Besrody, second violin, K. Moldavan, viola, Joseph Cherniavsky, cello, and Leo Berdichevsky, piano , although one source names the second violinist as Michael Rosenker, who was 19 years old at the time . It received its premiere at the Bohemian Club in New York, on 2 February 1920, with Prokofiev as guest pianist. Before they disbanded in 1922, the Zimro Ensemble performed it again at least twice at Carnegie Hall—with their own pianist, Berdichevsky, in 1921, and possibly with guest pianist Lara Cherniavsky in December 1920 . Prokofiev regarded the work as conceived essentially for a sextet, and long resisted suggestions of arranging it for other forces. In September 1930, he remarked, “I don’t understand what sort of obtuse people could have found it necessary to reorchestrate it” but, nevertheless, he was persuaded to make a version for chamber orchestra in 1934, published as Op. 34a . The orchestrated version is performed less often, because it lacks the earthiness and uncanny timbral balance of the original . Prokofiev did not regard the work very highly. When a Scots critic, Andrew Fraser, published an article in 1929 describing the Overture as “a beautiful and pathetic work”, the composer wrote in response, “its technique is conventional, its form is bad (4 + 4 + 4 + 4)”. When his friend Nikolai Myaskovsky praised the second theme, Prokofiev retorted, with reference to the work’s coda, “from the musical point of view, the only worthwhile part, if you please, is the final section, and that, I think, is probably the result of my sweetness and diatonicism” .

Peter & the Wolf ("Weird Al" Yankovic and Wendy Carlos album)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Accolades#

The album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children at the 31st ceremony.

Background#

Wendy Carlos was invited by CBS Records to work on the project with Yankovic. She had greatly enjoyed the collaboration, later recounting that “the project was a chance for some musical fun and tomfoolery, working with a bright, witty collaborator, before getting back to more adventurous tuning and timbre projects.” Carlos wrote new music for both stories.

Peter and the Wolf

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Background#

In 1936, Prokofiev was commissioned by Natalya Sats, the director of the Central Children’s Theatre in Moscow, to write a musical symphony for children. Sats and Prokofiev had become acquainted after he visited the theatre with his sons several times. The intent was to introduce children to the individual instruments of the orchestra to enjoy music and learn to recognize musical keys. The first draft of the libretto was about a Young Pioneer, Peter, who rights a wrong by challenging an adult. But Prokofiev was dissatisfied with the rhyming text by (real name Antonia Pavlovna Sokolovskaya), a then-popular children’s author. He wrote a libretto in which Peter and his animal friends capture a wolf. As well as promoting desired Pioneer virtues such as vigilance, bravery, and resourcefulness, the plot illustrates Soviet themes such as the stubbornness of the un-Bolshevik older generation (the grandfather) and the triumph of Man (Peter) taming Nature (the wolf). Prokofiev produced a version for piano in under a week, finishing it on 15 April. The orchestration was finished on 24 April. The work premiered at a children’s concert in the main hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the on 2 May 1936. Sats was ill, the substitute narrator was inexperienced, and the performance attracted little attention. Later that month, a more successful performance with Sats narrating was given at the Moscow Pioneers Palace. The U.S. premiere took place in March 1938, with Prokofiev conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall (Boston), and with Richard Hale narrating. By that time, Sats was serving a sentence in the gulag, where she was sent after her lover, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, was shot in June 1937.

Peter and the Wolf (1975 rock album)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Side One#

#“Introduction” – 1:05 #“Peter’s Theme” – 2:10 #“Bird and Peter” – 0:38 #“Duck Theme”" – 1:00 #“Pond” – 0:46 #“Duck and Bird” – 2:11 #“Cat Dance” – 2:37 #“Cat and Duck” – 1:32 #“Grandfather” – 3:04 #“Cat” – 0:34 #“Wolf” – 0:46 #“Wolf and Duck” – 3:46

Side Two#

#“Threnody For A Duck” – 1:51 #“Wolf Stalks” – 0:57 #“Cat In Tree” – 2:13 #“Peter’s Chase” – 1:45 #“Capture of Wolf” – 1:27 #“Hunters” – 0:58 #“Rock and Roll Celebration” – 2:38 #“Duck Escape” – 1:11 #“Final Theme” – 5:07

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)

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Structure#

The work’s single 15-minute span has the following tempo markings: #Allegro brioso — #Poco più mosso — #Tempo I — #Meno mosso — #Più mosso (Tempo I) — #Animato — #Andante assai — #Allegro scherzando — #Poco più sostenuto — #Più mosso — #Animato Described as extroverted, even showy, for much of its length, the concerto begins and ends with the same spacious D-flat theme. Its Andante assai section, in G-sharp minor, offers warm, veiled contrast: a quasi “middle movement.”

Piano Concerto No. 2 (Prokofiev)

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Movements and scoring#

The work is scored for piano solo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, tambourine and strings. It consists of four movements lasting some 29 to 37 minutes.

Premiere and reception#

Prokofiev premiered the work originally on September 5, 1913 (August 23 on the calendar used in Russia at that time), performing the solo piano part, at Pavlovsk. Most of the audience reacted intensely. The concerto’s wild temperament left a positive impression on some of the listeners, whereas others were opposed to the jarring and modernistic sound (“To hell with this futurist music!” “What is he doing, making fun of us?” “The cats on the roof make better music!”). When the original orchestral score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution, Prokofiev reconstructed and considerably revised the concerto in 1923; in the process, he made the concerto, in his own words, “less foursquare” and “slightly more complex in its contrapuntal fabric.”

Piano Concerto No. 3 (Prokofiev)

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Composition and performances#

Prokofiev began his work on the concerto as early as 1913 when he wrote a theme with variations which he then set aside. Although he revisited the sketches in 1916–17, he did not fully devote himself to the project until 1921 when he was spending the summer in Brittany. Prokofiev himself played the solo part at the premiere on 16 December 1921 in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frederick Stock. The work did not gain immediate popularity and had to wait until 1922 to be confirmed in the 20th century canon, after Serge Koussevitzky conducted a lavishly praised performance in Paris. The first Soviet performance was on 22 March 1925, by Samuil Feinberg, with the Orchestra of the Theatre of the Revolution under Konstantin Saradzhev.

Piano Concerto No. 4 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

Prokofiev noted the work’s commission in his diary entry on 18 June 1930. “A proposal from the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein to write him a concerto for the left hand. At first this seemed a ridiculous notion, but if the fee is decent, it should not take me too long.” In his autobiography Prokofiev noted Wittgenstein’s reaction to the piece on receiving it: “Thank you for the concerto, but I do not understand a single note and I shall not play it”. It was the only one of Prokofiev’s complete piano concertos that never saw a performance during his lifetime. It was eventually premiered in Berlin on 5 September 1956 by Siegfried Rapp and the West Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martin Rich. The United States premiere was in 1958, by Rudolf Serkin and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. The British premiere was in 1961, by Malcolm Binns. Prokofiev expressed some interest in making an arrangement for piano two-hands and orchestra, but never went through with this idea.

Piano Concerto No. 5 (Prokofiev)

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Music#

The work is scored for solo piano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum and strings. The concerto lasts 20–25 minutes, with five movements: The concerto exudes a particularly boisterous, even blustering atmosphere. The movements one to three feature similar themes, the first and third begin similarly, all three captivate largely by their rhythm. The second begins with lightning glissandi, introducing a dancing theme, later contrasted by more spreading motions. It ends in curiosity. The fourth movement comes as a bit of a surprise after what seems to be a fairly closed work. It is the longest and accordingly the slowest of all and has a climax of heroic grandeur. The Vivo opens poignantly, then goes over into a quieter mood, making use of the unconventional Locrian mode. The concerto ends at a blazing volume.

Piano Concerto No. 6 (Prokofiev)

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Piano Sonata No. 3 (Prokofiev)

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Historical background#

Early in his creative life, Prokofiev developed a highly individual way of writing for the piano. Though the differences between the piano textures of his early and late works are palpable, the main qualities of his piano writing are recognizable throughout. Prokofiev composed this piece in 1917, the same year as his fourth sonata. Both of these sonatas bear the subtitle “From the Old Notebooks”. This sonata derives from works that he composed as a teenager. In a letter to Miaskovsky on 26 June 1907, Prokofiev wrote about Piano Sonata no. 3: “It will remain…in one movement: pretty, interesting, and practical”. This sonata reveals most of the traditional sections in a sonata-form, within which Prokofiev employs his own blend of nineteenth- century Russian and twentieth-century characteristics. This third sonata was a clear departure of his previous humorous style with his second sonata from 1912. After the energetic and virtuoso third sonata, his fourth sonata and pieces that followed it were a clear departure from the style of his third sonata. He would compose extremely lyrical and introverted pieces after this.

Piano Sonata No. 4 (Prokofiev)

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Movements#

The piano sonata has three movements:

Style#

In his notes accompanying the full set of recordings of Prokofiev’s sonatas by Boris Berman, David Fanning states the following: Whether the restrained, even brooding quality of much of the Fourth Sonata relates in any direct way to Schmidthof’s death is uncertain, but it is certainly striking that the first two movements both start gloomily in the piano’s low register. Allegro molto sostenuto is the intriguing and apt marking for the first, in which a hesitant and uncertain mood prevails - the reverse of Prokofiev’s usual self-confidence. The Andante assai second movement alternates between progressively more elaborate statements of the opening theme and a nostalgic lyrical episode reminiscent of a Rachmaninov Etude-tableau; finally the two themes are heard in combination. With the rumbustious finale Prokofiev seems to be feeling himself again. But for all the gymnastics with which the main theme is varied there is less showiness in this essentially rather introvert work than in any of the other piano sonatas. In his own notes accompanying the full set of recordings of Prokofiev’s piano works by Frederic Chiu, he writes: Poles apart from the high-energy display of its twin, the Fourth Sonata looks inwardly. Its first movement is the most tenebrous movement in all of the Sonatas. Buried deep in the lower third of the keyboard where the close motion and full chords speak with difficulty, the irregular placement of slurred two-note motifs in triple time creates an ambiguous pulsation, which the later appearance of a light, chirping melody does nothing to clarify. This play with rhythm and sound was a rare experiment for Prokofiev, whose preferred musical genre was the march, and whose consistent rhythmic intelligibility is a joy for ballet dancers everywhere. The second movement provides no respite from the darkness. The cloudy atmosphere persists, created by the multiple layers of musical activity, which also reflects the movement’s origins as a symphonic work. Prokofiev the prankster makes a late but unmistakable appearance in the finale and, as always, rides the thin line between amusement and offense. The music begins by parodying the Alberti bass accompaniments so common in Classical piano writing, perks up what would otherwise be an unremarkable series of descending arpeggios by “missing” the bottom of each group by a half step, and otherwise creates havoc by haphazardly misplacing melodic notes by an octave.

Piano Sonata No. 5 (Prokofiev)

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Movements#

The piano sonata has three movements:

External links#

Video – Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 – Complete (16:27).
Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 in C major, Opus 38 (1923).
Video – Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 (1923) mvt 1 (05:36).
Video – Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 (1923) mvt 2 (03:56).
Video – Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 (1923) mvt 3 (04:38).
Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 in C major, Opus 135 (1952–53).
Video – Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 (1952-53) mvt 1 (06:22).
Video – Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 (1952-53) mvt 2 (04:41).
Video – Prokofiev Piano Sonata No 5 (1952-53) mvt 3 (05:32).

Piano Sonata No. 6 (Prokofiev)

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Music#

The work is in four movements:

I. Allegro moderato#

The first movement introduces the main motto, where the melody is played in minor thirds and parallel major thirds. This makes the movement tonally unstable, since both A major and A minor are established. Also, the motto is accompanied by a rising and falling augmented 4th between notes A and D, creating sharp dissonances. Thus, it already introduces the uncertainty of the work. The greater part of it is dominated by grinding dissonances and frequent modulation, further increasing the despair of the work. Throughout most of the piece, there is a lack of key signature.

Piano Sonata No. 7 (Prokofiev)

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Historical background#

On June 20, 1939, Prokofiev’s close friend and professional associate, the director Vsevolod Meyerhold, was arrested by the NKVD just before he was due to rehearse Prokofiev’s new opera Semyon Kotko; he was shot on 2 February 1940. Although his death was not publicly acknowledged, let alone widely known about until after Stalin’s reign, the brutal murder of Meyerhold’s wife, Zinaida Raikh, less than a month after his arrest was a notorious event. Only months afterwards, Prokofiev was ‘invited’ to compose Zdravitsa (literally translated ‘Cheers!’, but more often given the English title Hail to Stalin) (Op. 85) to celebrate Joseph Stalin’s 60th birthday. Later that year, Prokofiev started composing his Piano Sonatas Nos 6, 7, and 8, Opp. 82–84, widely known today as the “War Sonatas.” These sonatas contain some of Prokofiev’s most dissonant music for the piano. Biographer Daniel Jaffé has argued that Prokofiev, “having forced himself to compose a cheerful evocation of the nirvana Stalin wanted everyone to believe he had created” (i.e. in Zdravitsa) then subsequently, in these three sonatas, “expressed his true feelings”. The sonata was awarded a Stalin Prize (Second Class).

Piano Sonata No. 8 (Prokofiev)

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Movements#

The sonata has three movements.

I. Andante dolce – Allegro moderato#

The movement begins with a lyrical theme. The key is B major, but the sense of tonality is weak due to Prokofiev’s frequent modulations to remote keys. Next is a theme in G minor that goes through a series of modulations which prepares the development section. The development section is tonally unstable and propelled by motoric rhythms. Another theme emerges, leading into a reprise of the first theme, followed by a truncated reprise of the development section, this time in B minor. The movement ends in B major.

Piano Sonata No. 9 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

Prokofiev completed the sonata on September 27, 1947 in the Moscow suburb of , although thematic sketches exist from the mid-1940s. Upon introducing the score to its dedicatee, the composer said that he did not think the music was intended to create an effect, and that it was “not the sort of work to raise the roof of the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory .” Prokofiev had anticipated premiering the work in early 1948, but was prevented from doing so by the Zhdanovschina and the resulting censure he endured. The sonata would not be debuted until April 21, 1951 at a concert in Moscow organized by the Union of Soviet Composers in commemoration of Prokofiev’s birthday. The composer himself was too ill to attend, but listened to the performance over the phone.

Prodigal Son (ballet)

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History#

Serge Lifar created the role. The premiere took place on Tuesday, May 21, 1929, at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris, with décor by Georges Rouault and lighting by Ronald Bates, in what was to be the Ballets Russes’s last Paris season: “Balanchine’s choreography upset Prokofiev, who conducted the premiere. The composer had envisioned a production that was ‘real’; his concept of the Siren, whom he saw as demure, differed radically from Balanchine’s. Prokofiev refused to pay Balanchine royalties for his choreography.” Balanchine’s American Ballet danced Prodigal Son at its first public performance in 1934. The New York City Ballet premiere was on Thursday, February 23, 1950, at City Center of Music and Drama, New York, the title role danced by Jerome Robbins, with lighting by Mark Stanley. Hugh Laing and Francisco Moncion also danced it before it lapsed from the performance rota for a decade. It was restaged in 1960 with Edward Villella in the title role (Villella recounts his work in recreating the role in his autobiography of the same name). Prokofiev used the music from the ballet to form the basis of the two versions of his Symphony No. 4 composed in 1929 and 1947, respectively.

Quintet (Prokofiev)

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Background#

In 1924, when Prokofiev was staying in Paris, a travelling troupe commissioned a chamber ballet from him. However, the ensemble that provided music accompaniment to the troupe only contained five members. This provided Prokofiev an opportunity to write more chamber music. His most recent chamber piece had been the Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34 (1919). Later, Prokofiev incorporated the ballet music into two pieces: Quintet, Op. 39 (1924) and Divertissement Op. 43 (1925–29).

Romeo + Juliet (ballet)

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Romeo and Juliet (MacMillan)

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Background#

Kenneth MacMillan had previously choreographed the balcony scene for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable to dance in September 1964 for Canadian Television. This scene provided an essential part of the ballet’s overall structure. Seymour stated that the balcony scene pas de deux only took three rehearsals to fully choreograph. This experience made him seem a good candidate to choreograph the entire ballet for Covent Garden, when the Soviet Union refused to allow Leonid Lavrovsky’s classic production to tour to London. MacMillan prepared his version with the blessing of Frederick Ashton. MacMillan only had five months to choreograph the full ballet as The Royal Ballet hoped to perform Romeo and Juliet in its upcoming American tour. He, Seymour, and Gable planned the ballet around the characters and their pas de deuxs. They envisioned Juliet as the headstrong character, making decisions, while Romeo was “swept off his feet by love”. Nicholas Georgiadis designed the set and costumes with specific intent regarding the characters and feel of the performance. The imposing, large set designs were utilized to emphasize how small and vulnerable Juliet was in comparison and position her and Romeo as helpless against the society they live in. MacMillan and Georgiadias were inspired by Italian Quattrocento paintings and architecture; Shakespeare, and Franco Zeffirelli’s 1960 Romeo and Juliet production. MacMillan also took inspiration from Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet to include the rowdy harlots in the market scenes.

Romeo and Juliet (Nureyev)

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Background and premiere#

Rudolf Nureyev had previously danced as the leading role in Kenneth MacMillan’s production of the ballet at the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden in 1965. In 1977, Nureyev left the Royal Ballet and created his own production of the ballet for London Festival Ballet to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. This production premiered at the London Coliseum on 2 June 1977, with the British ballerina Patricia Ruanne as Juliet and Rudolf as Romeo. This production is still in the English National Ballet’s repertoire. This production was filmed in 1983 and broadcast in Italy and Britain, with the participation of Margot Fonteyn as Lady Capulet. In 1984, this production was introduced to Paris Opera Ballet with Monique Loudières and Patrick Dupond as the leading roles. The production was filmed and released in DVD format in 1995, featuring Loudières as Juliet and Manuel Legris as Romeo.

Romeo and Juliet (Pastor)

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Synopsis#

The ballet is recast as a contemporary political statement set in three Italian political eras of the 20th century. Act I is set in Italy in the 1930s, during the reign of Benito Mussolini and the emergence of Fascism. (1935 was the year in which Prokofiev composed the original score. ) Act II takes place in the 1950s, amid the rise of the Red Brigades and political terrorism.

Performances#

The ballet was premiered by the Scottish Ballet in 2008 at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. Following its debut, it toured the United Kingdom in 2010, Its United States premiere will be by the Joffrey Ballet at Auditorium Theatre with music performed by the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra in 2014. The Joffrey had previously performed Cranko’s adaptation of Prokofiev multiple times as early as 1984, when it gave the Prokofiev score its United States debut.

Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

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Background and premiere#

Based on a synopsis created by Adrian Piotrovsky (who first suggested the subject to Prokofiev) and Sergey Radlov, the ballet was composed by Prokofiev in September 1935 to their scenario which followed the precepts of “drambalet” (dramatised ballet, officially promoted at the Kirov Ballet to replace works based primarily on choreographic display and innovation). Following Radlov’s acrimonious resignation from the Kirov in June 1934, a new agreement was signed with the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on the understanding that Piotrovsky would remain involved. However, the ballet’s original happy ending (contrary to Shakespeare) provoked controversy among Soviet cultural officials. The ballet’s production was then postponed indefinitely when the staff of the Bolshoi was overhauled at the behest of the chairman of the Committee on Arts Affairs, Platon Kerzhentsev. The ballet’s failure to be produced in the Soviet Union until 1940 may also have been a result of consequences in the performing arts following Pravda’s denunciation of Dmitri Shostakovich in 1936, as well as other “degenerate modernists” including Piotrovsky. The conductor Yuri Fayer met with Prokofiev frequently during the writing of the music, and he strongly urged the composer to revert to the traditional ending. Fayer went on to conduct the first performance of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre. Suites of the ballet music were heard in Moscow and the United States, but the full ballet premiered in the Mahen Theatre, Brno (then in Czechoslovakia, now in the Czech Republic), on 30 December 1938. This version was a single-act production with music mainly from the first two suites. Prokofiev was not able to attend the premiere due to his status of outbound restriction. The history of the creation of the ballet was recited by the composer Sergei Prokofiev himself:

Sarcasms (Prokofiev)

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Background#

The five-movement Sarcasms was written during the course of three years, between 1912 and 1914. It was initially entitled Sarcastic Pieces, but Prokofiev eventually decided to rename the title on the advice of two of his contemporaries: V. Nuvel and A. Nurok. All five movements were eventually laid out chronologically: movement I was written in 1912, movements II and III were written in 1913, and movements IV and V were written in 1914. The set of sarcasms were in his personal collection and he performed selections and fragments from the Sarcasms and other pieces on occasion. The whole set was premiered by Prokofiev himself on November 27, 1916, in Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Petrograd. Pianist Heinrich Neuhaus recalled an anecdote from the premiere as follows: “Pince-nez placed on his nose, F.M. Blumenfeld cast his glance over Prokofiev’s head at the score. Sergei Sergeyevich was already prepared to begin, when he turned around suddenly and said: ‘Felix Mikhailovich! I’d rather you’d step to the side. I’m afraid you’ll hit me in the head with your fist.’ Everyone laughed. F.M. blew it off, but nevertheless stepped slightly to the side. Sergei Sergeyevich played through all the Sarcasms.” Sarcasms was first published that same year in Moscow by P. Jurgenson.

Scythian Suite

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Background#

Prokofiev originally wrote the music for the ballet Ala i Lolli, the story of which takes place among the Scythians. Commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev, the ballet was written to a scenario by Russian poet Sergey Gorodetsky. But when Diaghilev rejected the score even before its completion, the composer reworked the music into a suite for concert performance. The suite was premiered on at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, conducted by the composer. A scheduled Moscow performance of the suite that December was cancelled at the last minute due to the difficulty of finding musicians to play the piece; it called for an enlarged orchestra and, as many performers had been mobilized due to World War I, enough players could not be found. Nevertheless, the Moscow music critic Leonid Sabaneyev gave the music a scathing review. Prokofiev responded that the supposed performance must have been a product of Sabaneyev’s imagination, as the only copy of the score was in the composer’s hands and thus he had not even been able to see it.

Semyon Kotko

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Composition history#

One of only two operas written by Prokofiev on a Soviet subject (the other being The Story of a Real Man), Semyon Kotko was composed between the summers of 1938 and 1939. From the beginning, it was intended that the opera would be produced by the brilliant director and a great friend of Prokofiev, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was at that time the director of the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre. Both Prokofiev and Meyerhold had tried to plan productions of several of Prokofiev’s operas in the past, but all of them had failed. However, on 20 June 1939, just a week before Prokofiev completed the piano score of Semyon Kotko, Meyerhold was arrested. Nothing would be heard about his fate from then on; many years later it was revealed that he had been shot in February 1940. The whole production fell into jeopardy. An actress, Serafima Birman, took Meyerhold’s place, but the result was dissatisfying. The opera was further compromised by the Nazi-Soviet pact, which made it necessary to change the operatic enemies from Germans to haydamaks (Ukrainian nationalists).

Sinfonietta (Prokofiev)

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Music#

The Sinfonietta is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, and strings. The piece is in five movements, lasting around 25 minutes:

Sonata for Solo Cello (Prokofiev)

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Performances#

Blok’s reconstruction of the Sonata for Solo Cello was premiered by Natalia Gutman in Moscow in 1972, and was published the next year by publisher Hans Sikorski. It was not until a decade later, in 1984, that the first recording of the work was made by the British cellist, Steven Isserlis. Rostropovich himself never recorded the sonata although he is known to have performed it during his lifetime. In addition to Isserlis, recordings were made by Alexander Ivashkin, Raphael Wallfisch, and Luciano Tarantino. Performances generally last between 8 and 12 minutes. Isserlis performed this work at the funerals of both Lina Prokofiev (the composer’s first wife) and Oleg Prokofiev (the composer’s youngest son).

Sonata for Two Violins (Prokofiev)

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Structure#

The sonata is structured in the form of a sonata da chiesa from the Baroque period, in a slow-fast-slow-fast sequence, with a two-part counterpoint: A typical performance lasts for about 14 minutes.

String Quartet No. 1 (Prokofiev)

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Movements#

The string quartet has three movements:

Analysis#

The work is distinctive in that its key, B minor, is just a semitone below the limits of the viola and cello range. Another distinctive feature is that the finale is a slow movement, which is highly intense in emotion and full of sweeping melodies. Prokofiev had liked the finale so much that he transcribed a version of it for string orchestra, as Op. 50a, and included a piano transcription in his pieces as Op. 52.

String Quartet No. 2 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

Prokofiev, along with other Soviet artists, was evacuated from the major cities when the Nazis broke their non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. On August 8, 1941, Prokofiev traveled to Nalchik with other artists, among them his friend, musician Nikolai Myaskovsky, actors, such as Anton Chekhov’s widow, and others. Prokofiev stayed in the town of Nalchik, the provincial capital of the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous SSR, in the North Caucasus, about 900 miles south of Moscow (bordered by the European Russia, Turkey, and the Black and Caspian Seas). During this stay, Prokofiev was told by a government official to write a quartet using Kabardino-Balkar folk themes and wrote this string quartet, with themes based on folk tunes, rhythms and textures. This quartet, along with the first, has entered the repertory of many string quartets.

Symphony No. 1 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

The symphony is composed in a style based on that of Haydn and Mozart, but does not follow them strictly. It has often been described as “neo-classical”. The work was partly inspired by his conducting studies at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where the instructor, Nikolai Tcherepnin, taught his students about conducting Haydn, among other composers. The influence of Mozart is apparent in the light, airy scoring and the fast paced bustle of the outer movements but it does deviate from this influence in some surprising ways. Prokofiev’s own style is noticeable in the way the themes step upward or downward into the neighboring keys before returning to the first one. This is especially true of the second theme of the first movement and of the gavotte. Prokofiev wrote the symphony on holiday in the country, using it as an exercise in composing away from the piano. This also served to get him away from the violent street fighting of the February Revolution which was then underway in Petrograd.

Symphony No. 2 (Prokofiev)

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Structure#

Prokofiev modeled the symphony’s structure on Ludwig van Beethoven’s last piano sonata (Op. 111): a tempestuous minor-key first movement followed by a set of variations. The first movement, in traditional sonata form, is rhythmically unrelenting, harmonically dissonant, and texturally thick. The second movement, twice as long as the first, comprises a set of variations on a plaintive, diatonic theme played on the oboe, which provides strong contrast to the defiant coda of the first movement. The subsequent variations contrast moments of beautiful meditation with cheeky playfulness, yet the tension of the first movement is never far away and contributes an ongoing sense of unease. The last variation integrates the theme with the violence of the first movement, reaching an inevitable climax. The symphony ends with a touching restatement of the initial oboe theme, eventually dispelled by an eerie chord on the strings.

Symphony No. 3 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

The music derives from Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel, a touching love story set against the backdrop of demonic possession. This opera had been accepted for performance in the 1927–28 season at the Berlin State Opera by Bruno Walter, but this production never materialised; in fact, the opera was never staged in Prokofiev’s lifetime. Prokofiev, who had been working on the opera for years, was reluctant to let the music languish unperformed, and after hearing a concert performance of its second act given by Serge Koussevitzky in June 1928, he adapted parts of the opera to make his third symphony (shortly afterwards, he drew on his ballet The Prodigal Son for his Symphony No. 4 in similar fashion). The symphony, which was dedicated to Nikolai Myaskovsky was premiered on 17 May 1929 by Pierre Monteux conducting the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris.

Symphony No. 4 (Prokofiev)

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Context and genesis#

As a concert pianist, Prokofiev travelled worldwide, and toured the United States during the 1925-26 season. In early 1927, he went on a two-month concert tour of the Soviet Union. He planned to return in 1928, but those plans fell through. In 1929, another planned Soviet tour was cancelled, this time because of a hand injury Prokofiev suffered in a car accident. Throughout this time as a touring virtuoso, Prokofiev also continued to compose. Symphony No. 2 in D minor premiered in Paris under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky in the summer of 1925, to tepid critical response. At the same time, Sergei Diaghilev, the ballet impresario, suggested that Prokofiev write a ballet on a Soviet subject. The resulting piece was Le pas d’acier (The Steel Step), Prokofiev’s third ballet for Diaghilev, which premiered in Paris in the summer of 1927. He had also been working on an opera entitled The Fiery Angel, of which several premieres had been cancelled. He decided to salvage some of the material from the opera, and turned it into his Symphony No. 3 in C minor. In late 1928, with the aforementioned Soviet tour cancelled, Prokofiev decided to accept another ballet commission from Diaghilev. This piece, rather than being on futurist themes like Le pas d’acier, was based on a Biblical story: L’enfant Prodigue (Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Bible). The moralistic, Biblical subject matter was not an anomaly; such subjects were popular in the Parisian ballet scene in the late 1920s. As Prokofiev was composing The Prodigal Son in early 1929, he found that many of the themes he was creating would work better in a more developmental symphonic context, rather than the more episodic layout of a ballet. So, he began composing a new symphony, alongside the ballet. The two works share much of the same material, although one does not specifically borrow from the other: they were composed mostly concurrently. The ballet, The Prodigal Son, premiered in Paris in the summer of 1929, to great critical acclaim. It would be the last collaboration between Diaghilev and Prokofiev, because Diaghilev died just months later, in August. The symphony that resulted, Symphony No. 4, Op. 47, began from material originally written for the ballet’s fourth number. Prokofiev expanded the material into a sonata form, and the resulting music is the first movement of Symphony No. 4. The rest of the symphony draws on material that appears in the ballet, or that Diaghilev rejected as not fitting his vision for the ballet. Koussevitzky had been discussing a commission for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Prokofiev in 1929. Prokofiev’s response was the Symphony No. 4. However, because the commission fee was lower than Prokofiev was willing to accept, Prokofiev only allowed the Boston Symphony to purchase the manuscript of the work, rather than commission it. This meant that Prokofiev received less money, and the Boston Symphony did not get the prestige of a commission. Prokofiev worked on the symphony on the long train rides he had to take during a tour of the United States in early 1930. However, because of disagreements with Koussevitzky, he returned to Paris in March, before the symphony’s premiere in Boston in November.

Symphony No. 5 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

From 1925 onward, Prokofiev’s status as a composer grew, with his 1942 Piano Sonata No. 7 receiving the Stalin Prize (Second Class). Prior to composing his Fifth Symphony, Prokofiev relocated to Moscow as a result of his increasing reliance on financial support from the Soviet Union and their threat of revoking their contributions. The creation of the Fifth Symphony can be traced to musical ideas explored during the composition of Prokofiev’s earlier work, particularly the Symphony No. 4 in C major composed fourteen years prior. Prokofiev incorporated these musical motifs into a piano score over less than a month during his stay at The Composers’ House in Ivanovo, under the background of the Soviet Union’s involvement in World War II. He gave out in a statement at the time of the work’s premiere that he intended it as “a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.” He added, “I cannot say that I deliberately chose this theme. It was born in me and clamoured for expression. The music matured within me. It filled my soul.”

Symphony No. 6 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

reported that the composer had begun sketching out what eventually became the Sixth Symphony before he had embarked upon composing the Fifth. Prokofiev himself declared that work on the Sixth and its predecessor had overlapped. He also referred to both symphonies as “distractions” from his work on the opera Khan Buzai, a project which ultimately was unrealized. The first extant sketches for the Sixth are dated June 23, 1945. The sketch score was completed on October 9, 1946, whereupon he set it down for several weeks before starting the orchestration on December 10. Prokofiev completed the symphony on February 18, 1947. He briefly considered dedicating the symphony to the memory of Ludwig van Beethoven. Although the symphony shares the same opus number as Beethoven’s final piano sonata, one of Prokofiev’s favorite works, Nestyev said that the composer had contemplated the dedication because of “a desire to carry on the tradition of lofty intellectualism and profound tragedy that characterized Beethoven’s later works”. In the weeks following the symphony’s completion, Alexander Gauk expressed to Prokofiev his eagerness to premiere it. Nevertheless, the composer invited Yevgeny Mravinsky to hear him play his new symphony. On March 21, 1947, Mravinsky traveled with Prokofiev’s friend to the composer’s dacha in . After listening to Prokofiev’s playthrough, Mravinsky praised the music’s scope. He told the composer’s companion, Mira Mendelson, that the music sounded as if it had “spanned one horizon to the other”. He immediately requested to lead the premiere. Prokofiev prepared a brief description of the symphony ahead of its world premiere: The first movement is agitated, at times lyrical, at times austere; the second movement, “Largo”, is brighter and more tuneful; the finale, rapid and in a major key, is close in character to my Fifth Symphony, save for reminiscences of the austere passages in the first movement. Nestyev recalled that in October 1947 the composer had told him the symphony had been conceived as a reflection on the destruction of the recently concluded Great Patriotic War: Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds that cannot be healed. One has lost those dear to him, another has lost his health. These must not be forgotten. On October 8, 1947, Prokofiev arrived in Leningrad to assist Mravinsky in the rehearsals with the Leningrad Philharmonic. During the rehearsals for the symphony, Prokofiev described to Mendelson, whom he had married in January, that the “reminiscences” heard near the finale’s coda were “questions cast into eternity”. After she repeatedly requested him to elaborate on their meaning, the composer replied: “What is life?”

Symphony No. 7 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

Most of the symphony is emotionally restrained, nostalgic and melancholy in mood, including the ending of the Vivace final movement. However, Prokofiev was later convinced to add an energetic and optimistic coda, so as to win the Stalin Prize of 5,000 rubles. Before he died, Prokofiev indicated that the original quiet ending was to be preferred. The premiere was well-received, and in 1957, four years after Prokofiev’s death, the symphony was awarded the Lenin Prize.

Symphony-Concerto (Prokofiev)

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History#

Prokofiev began work on what would become the Symphony-Concerto after completing his Cello Sonata in 1949. The work was commissioned by Aleksandr Kholodilin, the head of the music division of the Committee on Artistic Affairs, with the completion date specified as 1 November 1951. The work drew, in part, on material contained in Prokofiev’s earlier Cello Concerto, which was premiered in 1938. Drafts of the new work were provided to Rostropovich for technical correction and refinement. The work was first performed, as Prokofiev’s Second Cello Concerto, on 18 February 1952 in Moscow, with Rostropovich as soloist and Sviatoslav Richter as conductor. Following a review by the Union of Soviet Composers, the concerto was further revised and retitled as the “Симфония-концерт” (commonly rendered in English as “Symphony-Concerto”). Prokofiev died before the final version was performed: the first performance of that version took place on 9 December 1954 with Rostropovich as soloist, accompanied by the Danish State Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Jensen. The Symphony-Concerto was one of several compositions for cello on which Prokofiev worked from the late 1940s until his death. In addition to the Cello Sonata, Prokofiev also commenced work on two unfinished works: a sonata for unaccompanied cello (for which he wrote 14 pages of sketches), and a Cello Concertino (later completed by Rostropovich).

Tales of an Old Grandmother

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Background#

Prokofiev’s pianistic output of this period is scarce since he put all his efforts into composing his opera The Love for Three Oranges. He also composed, around that time, Four Pieces, Op. 32. Both were written in order to mitigate his economic situation because of the delay of the opera’s premiere; however, he did not obtain the money in royalties he expected for them.

Description#

The set of works describes an old grandmother narrating tales to her young grandson who listens carefully in her lap. It is full of nostalgia, with all the movements written in minor keys. The work comprises four untitled movements: A performance lasts between eight and ten minutes.

The Fiery Angel (opera)

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Bryusov’s novel#

Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel is based on a novel of the same name by Valery Bryusov. Prokofiev was more intrigued by the “orgies” (here, indulgence of passion) presented in the novel rather than the story ideas. The novel was inspired by Bryusov’s own experiences with Nina Petrovskaya, and was considered one of the beginnings of the Russian Symbolist movement known as Vesy, or “The Scales”. Petrovskaya was the mistress of Andrey Bely. In their time together, Petrovskaya also came to know Bryusov in 1904, which sparked concerns for Bely. There was an anticipated brawl on a remote road in Moscow, but a mutual friend of Bryusov and Bely prevented the fight. Petrovskaya, Bely, and Bryusov inspired Prokofiev’s characters in his opera, making the novel the prime source of inspiration for the work. The novel was also the basis for the libretto of Prokofiev’s opera, which the composer himself wrote with the help of Demchinsky.

The Gambler (Prokofiev)

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Performance history#

The opera did not receive its first performance until April 29, 1929, after it had been extensively revised (in 1927), at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels. Prokofiev prepared an orchestral suite based on the opera in 1931 (see below). The Bolshoi Opera performed the opera at the Metropolitan Opera (The Met) in New York City in 1975, but the Met did not mount its own first production until March 2001. The original version of the opera was finally staged in 2001 at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

The Giant (opera)

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Composition history#

In 1899, at the age of eight, Prokofiev, who had already evinced remarkable musical abilities and had composed some piano pieces, was taken by his parents to Moscow, where he heard opera for the first time, (including Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor and Charles Gounod’s Faust). Keen to write an opera of his own, he wrote out a libretto in three acts and six scenes. With the help of his mother, the music he devised for this was transcribed. The plot was elaborated from the children’s games he played with his friends Egorka and Stenya, whose names are preserved in those of the characters. In the following year, the first act of the opera was given a premiere by the family at the estate of one of Prokofiev’s uncles near Kaluga, with his aunt Tatiyana taking the title part, and the composer and his cousins taking the other leading roles. There is no record of further performances.

The Love for Three Oranges

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Composition#

The opera resulted from a commission during Prokofiev’s first visit to the United States in 1918. After well-received concerts of his works in Chicago, including his First Symphony, Prokofiev was approached by the director of the Chicago Opera Association, Cleofonte Campanini, to write an opera. Conveniently the composer had already drafted a libretto during his voyage to America, one based on Gozzi’s Italian play in mock commedia dell’arte style (itself an adaptation of Giambattista Basile’s fairy tale). He had done so using Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Russian translation of the Gozzi and had injected a dose of Surrealism into the commedia dell’arte mix. But Russian would have been unacceptable to an American audience, and Prokofiev’s English was scanty, so, with possible help from soprano Vera Janacopoulos, he settled on French.

The Queen of Spades (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The Queen of Spades was originally intended to be released on the centenary of Pushkin’s death. However, the film was never finished, due to the tightening censorship in the USSR. Having signed a contract dated 29 May 1936, Prokofiev finished the piano score by 12 July, before sending it to his assistant, Pavel Lamm. When Prokofiev first played the piano reduction for Romm, Romm noted that it was neither lyrical nor dramatic, but “three and then seven pitches repeated endlessly,” which added to the films “aridity,” as well as conveying a sense of obsession and schizophrenia. The 14-page piano reduction manuscript is preserved at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, in Moscow. Prokofiev reused music from The Queen of Spades in the third movement of his fifth symphony, as well as in his Piano Sonata No. 8. Additional reworkings of the score have been composed by Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Michael Berkeley.

The Tale of the Stone Flower (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Numbers#

;Prologue: ::1 The Mistress of the Copper Mountain ::2 Danila and his work ;Act I: :Scene 1 ::3 Danila in search of the flower ::4 Danila meets some fellow villagers ::5 Scene and Duet of Katerina and Danila ::6 Interlude :Scene 2 ::7 Round Dance ::8 Katerina dances with her friends ::9 The Peasant Girls’ Dance ::10 Danila’s and Katerina’s Dance ::11 The unmarried men’s dance ::12 Severyan’s Dance ::13 Altercation over the malachite vase ::14 Scene of Katerina and Danila ::15 Danila’s Meditation :Scene 3 ::16 Danila enticed away by the Mistress of the Copper Mountain ;Act II: :Scene 4 ::17 The Mistress shows Danila the treasures of the earth ::18 Duet of the Mistress and Danila ::19 Scene and Waltz of the Diamonds ::20 Dance of the Russian precious stones ::21 Waltz ::22 Danila’s Monologue and the Mistress’ Reply ::23 The Mistress shows Danila the stone flower ::24 Severyan and the Workers; The Mistress’ Warning :Scene 5 ::25 Scene and Katerina’s Dance ::26 Severyan’s Arrival ::27 “Where are you, sweet Danila?” ::28 The Appearance of the Mistress; Katerina’s Joy :Scene 6 ::29 Ural Rhapsody ::30 Interlude ::31 Russian Dance :Scene 7 ::32 Gypsy Dance ::33 Severyan’s Dance ::34 Solo of the Gypsy Girl and Coda ::35 Katerina’s Appearance and Severyan’s Rage ::36 The Appearance of the Mistress and Scene of Severyan transfixed to the earth ::37 Severyan follows the Mistress ::38 Severyan dies :Scene 8 ::39 Katerina sits by the fire and yearns for Danila ::40 Scene and Dance of Katerina and the skipping of the Fire Spirits ::41 Katerina follows the Fire Spirits ::42 Dialogue of Katerina and the Mistress ::43 Danila turned to stone ::44 The Joy of the reuniting of Katerina and Danila ::45 The Mistress presents gifts to Katerina and Danila ::46 Epilogue

The Year 1941 (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

The suite is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, percussion (timpani, bass drum, triangle, wood block, side drum, tambourine, and cymbals), harp, and strings. The whole suite lasts for around 15 minutes.

Criticism#

Dmitri Shostakovich criticized the work’s weak movements, lack of development and thought that the materials were under-developed and not thought through. Even Nikolai Myaskovsky, Prokofiev’s closest friend, did not like the work. The suite has been described as evoking cold, abstract and inexpressive images in an attempt to oversimplify for greater clarity and comprehensibility. However, the work does contain a wealth of melodic material and Prokofiev later used some of the ideas and motives for the film score to Igor Savchenko’s depiction of the events of the Great Patriotic War, Partisans in the Ukrainian Steppes (1942, film released 1943). In 1948, Party officials, namely Tikhon Khrennikov, deemed the music unworthy of truly depicting the momentous events of the Great Patriotic War, and the Central Committee criticized it for its “anti-democratic, formalist tendency.” Sovetskaya Muzyka (Soviet Music magazine) also noted that “the music of the Suite, while at times very poetic, does not penetrate to the core of the events which are indissolubly associated, in our minds, with the tragic year of 1941.” The Year 1941 remained unpublished and was subsequently barred from performance.

Toccata (Prokofiev)

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Music#

Prokofiev’s Toccata starts off with persistent repetition of the D, interchanged between the right hand (which plays one note at a time) and the left hand (which also plays the note an octave lower). After a brief development, the left hand alternates between two chromatic scale patterns, one ascending and one descending, between which a repeating figuration in the right hand outlines the D minor triad. These patterns repeat a fourth higher and continue in various iterations. A series of split chromatic thirds leads upwards to a descending melody (in C), with the left hand simultaneously traveling up the chromatic scale. Prokofiev repeats and develops the chromatic-thirds theme before leading back to the initial repeated-note theme. After some augmentation and a short pause, both hands play the triad figuration, which now descends asynchronously in steps of a major third in each hand. This pattern underpins the right hand as it tackles leaps and later contrary-motion chromatic figures, while the left hand incorporates multiple of its own layers of chromatic movement. After a crescendo to fortissimo—during which the right hand outlines a C major triad while the left hand plays a four-note, black-key figure above it—the split chromatic thirds pattern reappears. This leads to several violent statements of the descending-thirds melody, this time in D, via chromatically ascending first-inversion minor triads in the right hand and descending chromatic octaves in the left hand. The repetition of D comes back one more, this time in alternating octaves in both hands. Then the Toccata slows down and halts temporarily; when it resumes, the repeated notes transition into a rising chromatic scale, which leads to octave exhortations. A glissando sweep up the keyboard brings the piece to its conclusion—two sforzando D octaves at each end of the keyboard.

Trapèze (Prokofiev)

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Background#

Violin Concerto No. 1 (Prokofiev)

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Structure#

The concerto is written in three movements:

History#

Despite the events leading to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and eventually the October Revolution, 1917 became Prokofiev’s most productive year compositionally. Along with this concerto he completed the “Classical” Symphony, the Third and Fourth Piano Sonatas, and the Visions Fugitives for piano. He also began the cantata Seven, They Are Seven, based on Chaldean texts, and worked on the Third Piano Concerto. The remaining movements were partly inspired by a 1916 Saint Petersburg performance of Karol Szymanowski’s Myths by Polish violinist Paul Kochanski. The Concerto’s premiere had also been delayed some seven years after it had been completed, due to Prokofiev’s itinerant existence at that time and the difficulty in finding a soloist. Had the premiere taken place in Petrograd in 1917, as initially planned, Kochanski would have taken the part. By 1923, however, Kochanski was unavailable for the scheduled Paris premiere. Bronisław Huberman would not even look at the score. Nathan Milstein was still in Russia. The violinist who finally tackled the solo part was Sergei Koussevitzky’s concertmaster, Marcel Darrieux; although not famous, he was a solid musician and a more than able violinist (Darrieux also premiered Kurt Weill’s Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments in 1925 ), which was all that was necessary for a performance. Joseph Szigeti was in the audience, and was so impressed with the work that he took the Concerto into his repertory. The following year Szigeti achieved success when he played the Concerto in Prague with Fritz Reiner as conductor, then toured it around Europe and the United States. There were also the musical tastes of the Parisian public to consider. Audience members, especially those who came to Koussevitzky concerts, wanted modern music with a certain amount of shock value. The fact that The Rite of Spring had failed a decade earlier was relative—the choreography had been a failure; the music was a success, as proved a few months later when it was heard enthusiastically in concert. While Paris welcomed spiked dissonant works such as the ballet Chout (The Buffoon) and the Scythian Suite, the First Violin Concerto was simply too Romantic in tone for their preferences. The composer Georges Auric even called the work “Mendelssohnian.” The premiere of the work in the Soviet Union is also worth noting since it was given just three days after the Paris premiere by two 19-year-olds, Nathan Milstein and Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz played the orchestral part on the piano. Milstein later wrote in his memoirs, From Russia to the West, “I feel that if you have a great pianist like Horowitz playing with you, you don’t need an orchestra.” Milstein and Horowitz also introduced Karol Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto at the same concert. In 1979, Jerome Robbins’s ballet Opus 19/The Dreamer, choreographed to the concerto, premiered at New York City Ballet, with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride leading the cast.

Violin Concerto No. 2 (Prokofiev)

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Background#

The violin concerto was premiered on 1 December 1935 at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid by the French violinist Robert Soetens and the Madrid Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós. Prokofiev wrote it after the first performance, by Soetens and Samuel Dushkin, of his Sonata for Two Violins, which pleased him greatly. Igor Stravinsky had recently written a concerto for Dushkin, and Prokofiev did the same for Soetens. The Spanish liked the premiere so much that they sent a delegation of musicians to thank Prokofiev afterward. The first two British performances of the concerto were again with Soetens: in 1936 under Sir Henry J. Wood, and in 1938, under the composer. Soetens played the work many times, all over the world, concluding with the premiere performance in South Africa in 1972, when he was 75 (he continued appearing in public until age 95, and died in 1997, aged 100).

Violin Sonata No. 1 (Prokofiev)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The work is about 30 minutes long and is in four movements of roughly equal length: Prokofiev had described the slithering violin scales at the end of the 1st and 4th movements as “wind passing through a graveyard”. The violin sonata was premiered by David Oistrakh (violin) and Lev Oborin (piano) on 23 October 1946, coached by the composer. During rehearsals, Oborin played a certain passage, marked forte, too gently for Prokofiev’s liking, who insisted it should be more aggressive. Oborin replied that he was afraid of drowning out the violin, but Prokofiev said “It should sound in such a way that people should jump in their seat, and people will say ‘Is he out of his mind? The first and third movements of the sonata were played at Prokofiev’s funeral by Oistrakh and Samuil Feinberg.

Visions fugitives

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

In August 1917, Prokofiev played the Visions for Russian poet Konstantin Balmont, among others, at the home of a mutual friend. Balmont was inspired to compose a sonnet on the spot, called “a magnificent improvisation” by Prokofiev, who named the pieces (the plural of Russian , ’evanescence’) from these lines in Balmont’s poem: “In every fleeting vision I see worlds, Filled with the fickle play of rainbows”. A French-speaking friend at the house, Kira Nikolayevna, immediately provided a French translation for the pieces: . Prokofiev often performed only a couple of them at a time as encores at the end of his performances.

War and Peace (opera)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

Mendelson and Prokofiev’s original scheme for the libretto of the opera envisaged 11 scenes, and Prokofiev began composing the music in the summer of 1941, spurred on by the German invasion of the Soviet Union which began on June 22, 1941. The description “lyric-dramatic scenes” in the libretto accurately suggests both a homage to Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and an emphasis on individuals and their emotions rather than on the bigger picture of a country at war. A piano score was completed by the summer of 1942 (two scenes having been changed from the original version), and it was submitted to the Soviet Union’s Committee on the Arts. The Committee demanded that the Part 2 (War) scenes needed a more patriotic and heroic emphasis. Prokofiev, who had wanted to see his masterpiece staged as quickly as possible, added marches, choruses, and other materials to Part 2 to satisfy the committee. In addition, he composed the choral Epigraph, which emphasises the Russian people’s defiance in the face of the enemy.

Wolf Tracks and Peter and the Wolf

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Awards#

The recording received a Grammy in 2004, for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, the first one ever awarded to either a former U.S. President or a Russian orchestra.

Zdravitsa

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

After Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union, he was viewed as a suspect in the eyes of the Stalinist regime and was under scrutiny. Numerous Soviet artists had already been arrested or even executed for creating art that was deemed too ‘formalistic’ by Soviet officials. Indeed, when Prokofiev collaborated with theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold for his opera Semyon Kotko, the opera’s premiere was postponed due to Meyerhold being arrested on 20 June 1939. Meyerhold was executed on 2 February 1940. In October 1939, Prokofiev was invited to write Zdravitsa for the approaching celebrations of Stalin’s 60th birthday on 21 December.