“I want nothing better, more flexible or more complete than the sonata form, which contains everything necessary for my structural purposes.”

Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin. Apart from the final years of his life, he managed more successfully than any other Great Russian composer living under the dictatorship to maintain his musical ideals.

He was a brilliant student. By the age of thirteen when he entered the St Petersburg Conservatoire he was already a good pianist and had produced an opera (aged nine), an overture and other works. He had the best teachers including, Glière, Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov (who was still around as professor of composition) and Anna Essipova, who had been married to one of the greatest piano teachers of the nineteenth century, Theodor Leschetizky, taught Prokofiev piano. Such a precocious, blazing talent inevitably rebelled against the stifling conservatism that confronted him.

Like Shostakovich and Britten, his style seemed to be pre-formed, completely original and one which remained constant for his entire creative life. Even before graduation, he caused a stir in musical circles with some of his compositions - the First piano concerto caused a furore when it was first played with its violent keyboard gymnastics, unexpected harmonic and melodic twists and angular rhythms. Before he was twenty, he was famous. But Prokofiev was no wunderkind who burns out after initial brilliance. 

In 1918 he left Russia and travelled through Siberia to Japan and America giving concerts of his own music and in 1920 arrived in Paris. Here, he met another ex-patriot, Sergei Diaghilev who commissioned three ballets, Chout, Le Pas d’acier and L’Enfant prodigue. Further commissions came from his publisher Koussevitzky and in 1921 he visited America again for the premiere of his opera The Love for Three Oranges.

After returning to Russia in 1927, where he was greeted as a celebrity, he flitted between his mother country, Paris and other European cities before deciding in 1932 to settle in Russia for good. Quite why he did this is open to question. Surely he knew to what political pressures artists were subjected. Stravinsky stated that it was because Prokofiev was politically naïve also because he had not met with all that much success in America: Prokofiev’s return to Russia, he said, was ‘a sacrifice to the bitch goddess’. Why did he not live and work abroad in peace like Stravinsky and Rachmaninov? Perhaps he thought he was famous enough to be treated differently by the authorities. In this he was sadly mistaken and, after an initial period of co-habitation, the authorities and Prokofiev were at loggerheads. Nevertheless, some of his finest music was written in the 1930s and during the war years, despite increasing ill- health and the break up in 1941 of his marriage after an affair with a 25-year old student, Mira Mendelssohn.

When the Central Committee of the Communist Party denounced Prokofiev, Shostakovich and others for ‘formalism’ - music that had no immediate function and did not extol the virtues of the wonderful Stalinist regime - a humiliating public apology appeared: ‘We are tremendously grateful to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and personally to you, dear Comrade Stalin, for the severe but profoundly just criticism of the present state of Soviet music...We shall bend every effort to apply our knowledge and our artistic mastery to produce vivid realistic music reflecting the life and struggles of the Soviet people.’

Thereafter, in the few years left to him, Prokofiev churned out inconsequential scores, the equivalent of the paintings of tractors and chemical works that Soviet artists were turning out. 

Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin. Apart from the final years of his life, he managed more successfully than any other Great Russian composer living under the dictatorship to maintain his musical ideals.

Prokofiev and his music

Writing of Prokofiev’s music, the critic Stephen Walsh summarised: ‘Twentieth-century music has been so full of attitudes, so self-conscious, so often a vehicle for ideas, feelings and manifestos which themselves have nothing to do with music, that it is peculiarly refreshing and reassuring to come back to a composer who wrote music simply out of an instinctive and irrepressible feeling for that medium’. 

Prokofiev is one of the most performed of all twentieth-century composers, some pieces like The Montague’s and Capulet’s from Romeo and Juliet have achieved the status of ‘classical pops’ while others, like the Third piano concerto, Lieutenant Kije and the ‘Classical’ symphony are central repertoire works.

Prokofiev was the dominant force among domiciled Russian composers during the 30s and 40s. Shostakovich, Khachaturian and the awful Tikhon Khrennikov all borrowed from Prokofiev and all cow-towed to officialdom. With the exception of the 1948 denunciation, life itself would not have been possible had he not conformed - Prokofiev was admirably obstinate in his determination to write the music he wanted.

His music is unmistakable after a few bars. For a start, his novel harmonic and melodic ideas are quite idiosyncratic: perhaps he’ll begin with a banal little tune and then suddenly have it leap up an unexpected interval; he uses orthodox chords in unorthodox relations and, equally markedly, he is witty - not in the elegant French way, but ironic and sardonic. Many of his early works are self-consciously mocking traditions in much the same way that ‘Les Six’ were to do. Some of the music is intentionally dissonant and aggressive - some of it is physically violent to perform - but it never abandons tonality completely for, under all the effects and shock tactics, he remains a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, in a chain that links him with Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Balakirev, singing the songs of old Russia in his own modern dress. Underneath he’s an old softy. 

Essential Works

Romeo and Juliet, Op.65 (1935) 

The music for the ballet (based on Shakespeare’s play) only became popular after the appearance of three orchestral suites based on the score; of these, the second is the most successful, opening with the strutting Montague’s and Capulet’s, sometimes called The March of the Nobles. 

Kirov Theatre Orchestra / Valery Gergiev. Philips 50 Great Recordings Philips 464 726-2PM2

Classical Symphony, Op.25 (1917)

One of Prokofiev’s most popular works, a delightful pastiche of the classical symphonies of Mozart and Haydn but with Prokofiev’s own piquant harmonies, quirky, hummable themes and masterly economy of writing. An easy and enjoyable introduction to the twentieth-century then, but how strange that such an infectious, bright piece should have been composed during the Russian revolution.

London Symphony Orchestra / Claudio Abbado. Decca SXL6469

Peter and the Wolf, Op.67 (1936)

Symphonic fairy tale for narrator and orchestra is the subtitle for this evergreen entertainment, written to teach children the different sounds of the instruments of the orchestra - the cat is the clarinet, the duck portrayed by the oboe, the wolf by three French horns and Peter by a string quartet, etc

'Sting (narr.); 'Stefan Vladar (p1); Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Claudio Abbado.  DG 429 396-2GH

Lieutenant Kije, Op.60, symphonic suite (1934)

This was the first music Prokofiev wrote after returning to Russia, composed for a film of the same name. It’s a comedy revolving round the deeds of the mythical Kije and the music matches the satirical vein of the story. Especially well known (and played to distraction every Christmas) is the Troika (‘Sleigh ride’).

Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Claudio Abbado. DG 2530 967

Alexander Nevsky, Op 78

Hugely influential film score for Eisenstein’s film of the same name that found wider popularity in its later cantata form. Traditional Russian songs meet furious action cues in the spectacular “Battle on the Ice” to mesmerizing effect.

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra / Andre Previn Telarc/Conifer CD80143