Sergei Prokofiev - Biography
Serge Prokofiev celebrated Russian Composer was born on April 27TH 1891 in Sontsovka Ukraine and died on March 5th 1953 in Moscow. His mother was an amateur pianist who gave him his initial lessons on the piano. By the time he as eleven she realized his musical talent was extraordinary and he needed advanced training. She pushed hard for him to have an audience with the eminent composer and pedagogue Taneyev who was able to arrange for the young composer Gliere to teach him harmony and musical theory by correspondence because his mother couldn’t afford the tuition. He wrote a few childhood works including an opera. Prokofiev was able to study with Rimsky-Korsakov until his death where he came into contact with a somewhat older Stravinsky. Prokofiev by his late teens was already composing in an advanced style. Among his first works were the Piano Sonatas # 1 and 2, an unfinished opera Maddelina and the FIrst Piano Concerto that were completed before he was twenty one. He graduated from the St. Petersburg institute in 1912 first in his class and won the Rubinstein prize that enabled him to travel to Switzerland and Paris .Prokofiev besides his compositional skills was a superb pianist but as with his early music his playing was brilliant but acerbic. This style is displayed in his acidic but engaging early piano pieces Visions Fugitives and Sarcasms. His first major orchestral piece Scythian Suite first performed was even louder and more explosive then Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring that was written the previous year. Prokofiev was getting a reputation as and Enfant Terrible (The Famed Russian composer Glazunov ran out of a Prokofiev concert in horror).A few years after this he composed a piece in an entirely different vein Classical Symphony a brilliant parody of Haydn that whizzes by at barely thirteen minutes. He also completed his First Violin Concerto and the terrifying cantata They Were Seven.
In 1918 amidst the Russian Revolution he left his homeland by way of Siberia to come to the United States. Prokofiev’s U.S. concert tour was promoted as an opportunity to hear the music of a wild eyed revolutionary. Conservative critics were horrified and felt that Prokofiev music was ugly, dissonant and represented a look into an ugly mechanistic future. Prokofiev while in New York composes his ironic comic opera Love for Three Oranges. The premiere materialized and had to wait two years before it was shown in Chicago.
Prokofiev left New York for Paris in 1920 where he established a relationship with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe. He wrote the Ballets The Steel Trot and L Enfant prodigue for the Ballet Russe. He also during this period wrote the intractable Second Symphony and the not much easier Third Symphony that used themes from his initially unsuccessful opera The Fiery Angel (in recent years it has become a success).Prokofiev wrote another opera The Gamblers based on the Dostoyevsky story that premiered in Brussels. He added a Fifth Piano sonata, the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concerto same year and composed his last major Parisian composition Fourth Symphony for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony conducted by his friend and mentor Serge Koussevitzky it’s music director.
In the early1930’s Prokofiev moved back to Russia with his Spanish born wife Lina and his two sons, he felt spiritually depleted away from his homeland, initially he was welcomed back open arms but he stirred resentment among some Soviet musicians of western decadence and cosmopolitism. His first major composition in Soviet Russia was the great ballet Romeo and Juliet and the perennial children’s classic Peter and the Wolf. Prokofiev around this time formed a lifelong liaison with a young Russian woman Myra Mendelssohn who was an ardent Communist, he never divorced Lina (who eventually was sentenced to a Gulag for twenty years for ‘espionage’ but was released in four years after Stalin’s death). Prokofiev wrote some celebrated film scores during this period Lt. Kije that was later excerpted in to a famous and Sergei Eisenentein’s film Alexander Nevsky which Prokofiev recast into a Dramatic Cantata. Prokofiev tried hard to be a good loyal Soviet citizen and wrote a Cantata for the sixtieth birthday of Stalin. He also wrote the splendid Violin Concerto in 1937 that was popularized by Heifetz in the West.
The early 1940’s saw the composition of the outstanding Sixth and Seventh Piano Sonata and an opera Semyon Koto. In September of 1941 Germany broke their non-aggression pact with Russia and launched a full scale attack. Prokofiev was evacuated to the Caucuses where he was to work on his largest scale work War and Peace a four hour opera based on the Tolstoy novel. The novel’s plot revolves around Napoleon’s eventually unsuccessful invasion of Russia in 1812 he viewed the writing of this work as a patriotic act. He was simultaneously working on the popular ballet Cinderella and the Eighth Piano Sonata. In 1944 he was to write what may well be his greatest work the heroic Symphony no. 5 in B Flat. Prokofiev around this time was to experience severe high blood pressure which induced fainting spells one of which resulted in a fall that caused a serious head injury. Prokofiev was to collaborate with Eisenstein again in what was intended to be a three part film Ivan the Terrible which Stalin when he viewed it felt it to be a personal insult to him and the third part was not completed (Eisenstein was to die in 1948 at fifty). Prokofiev wrote too outstanding works the Sixth Symphony and the Ninth Piano Sonata after the war.
The powerful cultural czar Zhdanov issued a decree in 1948 that denounced Prokofiev along with other famed Soviet composers, Shostakovich, Myaskovsky and Khachaturian as being cosmopolitan and formalist (Western European) and not true composers of the people. Zhdanov was a close friend of Stalin and the document was considered to have Stalin’s seal of approval. Even though Prokofiev recanted and wrote patriotic works like On Guard for Peace many concert promoters were afraid to have his works performed he was affected financially and had a detrimental effect on his failing health. Prokofiev’s final opera The Story of a Real Man about Soviet flyer was severely denounced by the critics. One of his few solaces was the friendships that he formed with great young Russian artist’s Richter, Gilels, Oistrakh and Rostropovich who were to do so much for his music in future years. He was particularly close with the young Rostropovich for whom he was to re write and expands his early Cello Concerto which now became Sinfonia Concertante and was also to write a Cello Sonata for him. The list of major works was to conclude with a full length ballet the Stone Flower and the cheerful and the childlike Seventh Symphony. Prokofiev was to die of an apparent cerebral thrombosis on March 5th 1953 the SAME day as Josef Stalin. Stalin’s death particularly in Moscow was considered a national calamity Prokofiev could not even have his body removed for a period of time from his apartment and pre recorded music had to be performed at his funeral because nearly every musician in Moscow had a role in Stalin’s massive funeral. The outside world was not even aware of his passing until a small article appeared in a Soviet music journal weeks later.
Serge Prokofiev has managed to keep his popularity for a half century or more after his death. He didn’t create a school of music like Schoenberg or Stravinsky who had intellectual acolytes to fight for him so he is somewhat critically underrated. Many modernists felt that his lyrical accessible works of the Soviet period were a sellout. These Soviet works don’t have the brilliance of the early Soviet works, but they often have a heart piercing beauty and are always superbly crafted. Prokofiev is one of the most widely recorded of Twentieth Century Composers and there are many splendid performances to choose from.