Category Archives: Composers

Prokofiev (1)

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891 – 1953) – Part 1. The Early Years to 1918

This September Matthew Taylor commences his series of lectures on the works of Prokofiev. This note does not attempt to describe the music which Matthew will illustrate and analyze. It is an attempt to give a little biographical background and it is by no means comprehensive. So E & O E.

To all intents and purposes Sergei Prokofiev was Russian. In point of fact he was born and reared at Sontsovka in the Ukraine. Now to refer to a Ukrainian as Russian is about as accurate as referring to Alex Ferguson as an English football manager. However, in the case of Prokofiev his parents were Russian and had only set up home some ten years earlier in Sontsovka where his father had been appointed as an agricultural engineer and estate manager. Prokofiev was not therefore an indigenous Ukrainian in the same way that Josef Stalin was an indigenous Georgian. Prokofiev would have seen himself as an out and out Russian and it was to Russia for which he had pined and to where he returned in 1936.

His mother, Maria Grigoryevna Prokofieva, was musical and played Beethoven, Chopin and some easier Liszt. However, her great passion was for Tchaikovsky and, even more so, for Anton Rubinstein. Prokofiev was no prodigy à la Mozart so much as a remarkably precocious child whose interest in music was matched by his studies of sciences, maths and especially chess in which he was self taught and played all his life. His mother encouraged his developing interest and he started to learn the piano with her at the age of 5 at which age he wrote his first composition, an Indian Gallop. At the age of 8 he was first taken to St Petersburg and then to Moscow to visit relatives where he had his first operatic encounters with Gounod’s Faust and Borodin’s Prince Igor. The result was his writing his first opera, “the Giant” at the age of 9 and presenting it in a home production in 1901.

Visits to St Petersburg and Moscow became annual events and it had become clear by the time he was ten that Prokofiev was destined for a musical career with the piano at the forefront. Through the agency of a friend at St Petersburg conservatory it was arranged that Rheinhold Glière, best known to-day for his Red Poppy Suite, would come to Sontsovka to teach Prokofiev which he did over two summers. The productive outcome was the opera, a symphony and several small piano pieces which Sergei called his puppies.

By 1904, at the age of 13, Sergei was taken to St Petersburg Conservatory. Its principal was Alexander Glazunov (best known for his ballet, The Seasons, and for finishing the orchestration of Prince Igor). It was he who suggested that Prokofiev take the entrance examination. Prokofiev describes it in his biography as:

“The entrance examination was quite sensational. The examinee before me was a man with a beard who had nothing to show the examiners but a single romance without accompaniment. Then I came in, bending under the weight of two huge folders containing four operas, two sonatas, a symphony and a good many pianoforte pieces. ‘Here is a pupil after my own heart!’ observed Rimsky-Korsakov, who headed the examining board.”

Prokofiev not only gained his entrance but at the age of 13 was the youngest to do so. (My research shows that Taneyev gained entry to Moscow Conservatory aged 9). As far as Maria Grigoryevna was concerned Sergei was old enough to enter the conservatory but she herself would move to St Petersburg to take care of her son notwithstanding the protests and Chekovian threats of suicide by her husband.

The musical scene in Russia during the first decade of the twentieth century was one of flux. It had changed from the Russia of the Mighty Handful, those nationalists who had followed in Glinka’s footsteps and who either had depicted historical Russia or pseudo-orientalism. In total contrast to them had been the Russian Germanics led by the Rubinstein brothers, Nicolai and Anton, whose music was descended down the line of Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Somewhere in between was Tchaikovsky whose leanings were towards the orthodox school but his feet were never quite entrenched in either camp. Now in the twentieth century there was a distinct conservative reaction. Glazunov’s earlier promise as a kind of musical executor to Borodin had yielded to a dull conservatism in comparison with which Brahms’ music, for instance, sounds positively extravagant. Equally reactionary was Taneyev, former pupil of Tchaikovsky, who had immersed himself into counterpoint, Bach and Palestrina in particular. I have one disc of Tanyev’s music in my collection which I reckon should have received a Gramophone Award for uninspirational boredom. In contrast were the modernists exemplified by the emergence of Scriabin who was a kind of Russo-Richard Strauss but more extreme. He seemed to regard himself as a musical Messiah and met his Calvary in 1915. Also prominent in the continuing romantic school were Rachmaninoff and Medtner both of whom were to
emigrate after 1917.

Sergei was to spend the next ten years in study, mostly rebellious. He took up his place with students who were all much older than him but this did not appear to bother him. The names of teachers he had would find their way into most concert programmes, Liadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Tcherepnin and Taneyev. Sergei was not overawed by their reputation. He was irritated by Rimsky’s lectures and did not have the same fondness for him as did Stravinsky. As to Liadov who lectured on harmony, Sergei compiled a spreadsheet list of all the harmonic errors Liadov would pick out – 19 of them according to Sergei who kept a record of the mistakes made by all his fellow students. Little wonder they resented the presence of this adolescent know-all.

The next year, 1905, saw the outbreak of an uprising. It could be said to have been a rehearsal for 1917. There was mutiny in the navy, famously recalled in Eisentstein’s film “the Battleship Potemkin”. In the country there was a call for the setting up of the Duma. The unrest was felt at the conservatory at St Petersburg where the students went on strike and several tutors were suspended. Rimsky-Korsakov was dismissed for his support but was later re-instated. Prokofiev may have felt the thrill but he was neither then nor later in life a political person. For him the cancellation of lectures was a nuisance.

When he was 16 Sergei met Myaskovsky who was ten years his senior and had been a professional soldier and was now pursuing his musical studies. The two formed a bond which lasted till Myakovsky’s death in 1949 and they continued to correspond and send each other their scores even during the period of Prokofiev’s residence in America. At the conservatory they would call any work they disparaged as “Rubinstein”, a coded euphemism for merde. So much for Prokofiev’s esteem for his mother’s favourite composer! Mind you, the expression was in wider circulation as Stravinsky recalls Rimsky Korsakov commenting on Scriabin as “c’est du Rubinstein”. Here allow me to record a personal word of protest. My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was also Rubinstein and I recall wedding invitations from relatives of that name whom I did not know. Nevertheless whilst family connection may cause me to join issue, in respect of Scriabin I entirely agree with Rimsky’s sentiments. Scriabin was to start with an inspiring influence on Prokofiev and Miaskovskybut this was to wane. Max Reger, a particular favourite of Matthew Taylor, was also the flavour of the day .

At the same time Sergei was beginning to be known for his pianistic prowess. In 1908 he was attending an informal group “Evenings of Contemporary Music” playing his own music as well as that of certain emerging contemporaries. Anybody who was anybody, composer, performer or critic was to be seen there and Prokofiev’s reputation was spreading amongst the cognoscenti although his participation gave concern to his professors. In 1909 his composing and theory course came to an end with the following comment by Glazunov:

“Technical preparation exceedingly brilliant. Interpretation unique, original, but not always in the best artistic taste.”

Sergei remained enrolled at the Conservatory studying piano under Anna Esipova, renowned international pianist, and conducting under the composer, Nicolai Tcherepnin from 1909 to 1914. In 1912 he published his first piano concerto soon to be followed by his second which received even more scathing reviews than did the first. Prokofiev seemed to thrive on criticism, unlike Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov who would wilt under the onslaught. For Prokofiev, the greater the criticism, the more provocative would be the next response.

The first concerto is in fact quite short, less than 20 minutes but powerful and muscular. It is in three movements or possibly it could be called one movement in three parts as there are no breaks and it ends full circle with the opening theme. It got a drubbing from the American critics later in the 1920’s. The second piano concerto is even more powerful but less attractive. It was rewritten in 1923, because Prokofiev had left the score behind when he went to America. Apparently the occupants of his flat then found the score and burnt it to cook an omelette. (They sound as if they might have been out of La Bohème). Prokofiev was to rewrite a number of his published compositions for various reasons. Apart from leaving his music behind and the obvious wish on occasion to make improvements it would often be with the intention of presenting the music in a different ambiance to that for which it was originally conceived. The result is not the ditching of an inferior work but the creation of an alternative and adding the suffix “bis” to the original opus number. He also wrote probably more orchestral suites compiled from his operas and ballets than any of his contemporaries to make sure that audiences who had not heard the stage work would still get to know the music. So, even though a production of the stage work might not get mounted, few of us will not have heard the March and Scherzo from the Love of Three Oranges. Added to this was the difficulty Prokofiev could create for himself by the amount of memorable themes he was able to pour out. Hence, the reason for three different suites for Romeo and Juliet alone.

By 1913, the conservatory years were coming to their end after ten years but there remained one further glittering opportunity for Sergei to tackle, the Anton Rubinstein Prize, awarded to the best piano student. Sergei decided to enter but instead of choosing a well known concerto he decided to play his own first piano concerto. What chutzpah but there was nothing in the rules to prevent this and Sergei had to arrange prints of the score for the judges who would not be familiar with the work. Actually, it was a clever entrapment. The judges would have known their Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Chopin etc well enough to have picked holes in the player’s technique and to have gone to town in criticising the interpretation. Here they did not know the work, did not like the work but their critical faculties would have been too blunted to be able to make any independent assessment of their own. However they were clearly bowled over by Prokofiev’s pianistic bravura. So, not only did he win a piano competition to enhance his virtuoso reputation, much to the chagrin of Glazunov whose duty it was to announce the judges’ decision, but also it added to what Sergei had set his sights upon, a big splash for his reputation as a composer.

With this triumph behind him Prokofiev set out in June 1914 for bigger and better things. Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes had come to London to perform the ballets which had stunned Paris and it was against this background that Sergei Prokofiev, wanting part of the action, was to come to London to seek out Diaghilev. He brought with him the second piano concerto which he played to Diaghilev who was impressed sufficiently to consider using it as a ballet although he decided against it. Instead, Diaghilev came up with the idea of setting the tale of Ala and Lolli to music for a ballet and was happy to commission the work. It was to be based on the primitive rites of the warlike Scythians who between 900 and 700 BC occupied what is now Anatolia in Turkey. Coming a year after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring the similarities could not have been co-incidental. Prokofiev was clearly aiming to outdo Stravinsky.

The First World War threatened. The lamps were going down all over Europe and Prokofiev made his way home to St Petersburg just before the outbreak of hostilities between Tsarist Russia with Germany. Sergei’s father had died in 1910 and Prokofiev was exempted military service, being the only son of a widow, In 1915 he travelled to Milan to see Diaghilev and to play to him part of the draft score of Ala and Lolli but Diaghilev then changed his mind and rejected it. Ever resourceful, Prokofiev was not going to waste a year’s effort and immediately decided to rewrite it as an orchestral suite to be called “The Scythian Suite”. There has been some debate as to just why Diaghilev turned it down. Musically Ala and Lolly was not as dissonant as The Rite of Spring. It seems possible that Diaghilev did not want a repeat of The Rite of Spring debacle. It is certain that he had at least some confidence in Prokofiev’s composing ability because as fast as he rejected Ala and Lolly, he commissioned Prokofiev to write another ballet, “Chout”, also known as “The Tale of the Buffoon”. Even then Diaghilev put that one on the back burner which may have been because there was no longer the money to mount the lavish productions of the pre-war years. Besides fashions were fast changing and Diaghilev was a man who always needed to be one step ahead, vogue-wise.

The period to 1917 produced a number of works. The Scythian Suite was awaited with keen anticipation by members of the Evening Contemporary Music Group. It was given its first performance in St Petersburg in January 1916 and received by some but not all with acclaim. Prokofiev appeared to will a repeat of the debacle previously accorded to the Rite of Spring in Paris. “Do you know that the price of rotten eggs and apples has gone up in St. Petersburg? That’s what they’ll throw at me!” Its repute was only to be helped by Glazunov, ever the masochist, walking out.

There then followed work on a new opera, The Gambler, based on the short novel by Dostoevsky. It was cancelled and never to be performed for many years. Firstly it was decried by the singers at the Maryinsky and the events of 1917 put paid to any plans for production.

Never put off, Prokofiev started early work without commission on a new opera, the Love of Three Oranges, based on an eighteenth century Italian play by Carlo Gozzi. It would not be finished until later on after he had left for America.

During this period he was writing extensively also for the solo piano and particularly noteworthy are the Visions Fugitives and the third and fourth piano sonatas. He also made a start on his third piano concerto which would turn out to be the most popular of the five he wrote.

The first revolution of 1917 in March leading to the Kerensky government was particularly disruptive in St Petersburg, now renamed Petrograd. It was there that Prokofiev completed his first symphony, the Classical. It is a fair assumption to say that most people would have first encountered Prokofiev with “Peter and the Wolf”. It is a fairly safe bet to say that the second most popularly known work of his is the Classical Symphony. It has the feel of being a first work but it certainly was not and it comes as a shock that this composition came after the Scythian Suite. Prokofiev wrote “Until this time I had always composed at the piano, but I noticed that thematic material composed without the piano was often better.” Another comment has been made that Prokofiev could only keep in key when writing at the piano and that this was an attempt not to stray out of key. In this regard it must be adjudged a failure, one which has given rise to a spectacular success. There are a number of articles referring to this work as neo-classical. I question that label. Neo-classicism was to dress up old composers in new clothes (à la Stravinsky in Pulcinella) or to write modern music inspired by old forms like the concerti grossi of Martinu in the 1930’s and which do not invoke the past but sound like the 1930’s. The Classical Symphony does not contain quotes by Haydn or by anybody else; it is pastiche but more than that it evokes the spirit of an earlier age rather than its form. In this it is more like the Percy Grainger of Handel in the Strand…. without the twee. For Prokoviev this was a one off visit to the past. He himself was later to describe Stravinsky’s neo-classical music as “Bach with wrong notes.” Stravinsky was kinder in describing Prokofiev as the greatest Russian composer of his day… after himself. The Classical Symphony was followed by the first Violin Concerto, a virtuoso romantic work which deserves to be a concert hall pot boiler.
By September Poland had seized the Ukraine and it was hotting up in Petrograd with threats of German invasion. Prokofiev went to visit his mother in the Caucasus. The next month, the Bolshevik revolution took place. The Kerensky government fell and the Lenin government took power. Prokofiev was cut off in territory held by the Whites until the Reds entered. He now felt the need to travel further afield and in particular to make his mark in the USA. Under the new government he needed to travel to Moscow to obtain a permit. Civil war was taking place in Russia and there was a risk of trains being shelled. Prokofiev was not deterred and made his way. He had no plans for exactly how long he would be away but he envisaged it as months when he requested his exit visa. At this time there was no concept of Socialist realism, no Zdahnov decree, no directive on how Marxism should present the arts save that in a Marxist/Leninist society they would find their own level. However, a composer would now need government permission to publish any work and, with the likes of Glazunov continuing to head the Conservatory, Prokofiev must have seen the red light and looked for the green one. The officials felt that he ought to stay but saw his music as a suitable vehicle to promote the emerging Soviet Union and granted his exit permit. He was not seeking to emigrate nor fleeing but looking for pastures new to promote himself. As David Gutman has written, Prokofiev would not have had Lenin in mind as his guru but Stravinsky. It was not to be a case either of “Go west young man”. The First World War was still raging in central Europe and the Western Front and it was impassable. It became instead a case of “Go east young man.”

Prokofiev (2)

PROKOFIEV: (1918 – 1936) THE AMERICAN AND THE FRENCH YEARS

Go East young man. Getting to America started with Prokofiev taking the Trans Siberian Railway to Vladivostok in May 1918. The slow journey through civil war torn Russia took 18 days including being stopped by Czech troops who were aiding the Whites. Shades of Pasternak – a pity Dr Zhivago had not yet been written because it would have made a great opera. During the journey Sergei was in fact studying Babylonian art. From Vladivostok he sailed to Japan for a brief stay. Western Music was little known there but an article had figured on Prokofiev to enable him to be invited to give some recitals in Tokyo and Yokohama to curious, albeit not greatly appreciative, audiences. Then onward by ship arriving in San Francisco in August. He was broke, kept in police custody for three days as a maximalist, a Bolshevik by another name. With $300 he had borrowed from a passenger he had met on board he was able to travel to New York, where he arrived in September. He was soon asked to give a recital. Whilst the critics railed against his savage music and steely, mechanistic playing, the public accorded him a better reception. His expectation soon turned to disappointment and the novelty of being a product of the emerging Bolshevik state cast a shadow on his new music. He was billed as the “Bolshevik Pianist” in promotional posters, and his playing was often described as “barbaric.” The negative reviews took their toll on Prokofiev. He quickly grew bitter about America; bitter of managers who arranged long tours for artists playing the same old hackneyed programme fifty times over; bitter of the lack of recognition to composers as opposed to the celebrity accorded to performers.

In December of 1918, he fared better with successful performances of his First Piano Concerto and Scythian Suite at Chicago. After these concerts, Cleofonte Campanini, manager of the Chicago Opera, asked if he could stage one of his operas. His only completed opera so far was “The Gambler” but he had left the score in Russia. Instead he offered to complete his unfinished opera, The Love of Three Oranges. Campanini, appreciating its Italian sources, enthusiastically accepted and a contract was signed for the following autumn. It was in fact finished and ready within three months.

Soon after, Sergei met Carolina Codina, an operatic soprano, known by her stage name, Lina Llubera. She had been born in Spain; her father was Spanish; her mother was of Polish and Alsatian descent. She and Prokofiev became an item, eventually marrying in Bavaria in 1923.

One success in 1919 came from a chance request from Zimro, an ensemble of Jewish musicians, whose members had known Prokofiev in the Conservatory days. Their concerts were promoted to raise funds towards the building of a university at Jerusalem in the hope of attracting Jewish audiences, Added to a conventional string quartet were a piano and clarinet. They gave Prokofiev a collection of Jewish folk music to write a piece for their sextet. At first he was hesitant as he preferred to work from his original ideas but his interest perked up and he took all of a day and a half to compose the Overture on Hebrew Themes. Its main theme has a klezmer flavour, semitic sounding but never schmaltzy. The secondary theme has a peaceful charm, quite the other side of the coin to the modernist, motoric themes for which Prokofiev was now largely known. In 1934 he was to orchestrate it but the later version does not have the seductive attraction of the original sextet.

Despite some successes, his performances in New York were now regularly reviled in the press, this from “Musical America in 1918: “Nor in the Classical Symphony, which the composer conducted, was there any cessation from the orgy of discordant sounds.” Now I ask you. Who in their right mind would refer to the Classical Symphony of all his works as an orgy of discordant sounds? Probably only a critic who was sitting throughout in the bar anyway. No wonder these were difficult times for Prokofiev and that he went down with diphtheria and scarlet fever.

Campanini died suddenly in December 1919 with the Love of Three Oranges in rehearsal. The management at Chicago Opera, uncertain of themselves, decided to postpone until the following year but without paying Prokofiev his commission. Concert appearances were drying up and Prokofiev, in the spring of 1920, finding himself out of work, embarked for France to seek out Diaghilev.

What had gone wrong? It was not only the money. It was the hostility, particularly in New York. He had gone there as the composer and they were wanting the pianist. He would have been sickened by the poster proclaiming “Stravinsky – composer: Prokofiev – pianist”. Managements were not interested in concerts devoted to any one composer, let alone a contemporary one and Prokofiev was not prepared, except to promote himself as a composer, to do the rounds of concert halls playing the piano, as was Rachmaninov. America was alive with established novelists, playwrights, poets, artists and musical performers but it had yet to develop itself as a country fit for composers. Indigenous talent, such as Gershwin and Copland was yet to emerge, Charles Ives excepted and unknown. The injection of European blood to add to this would be ten or more years away. It was all too early or as Prokofiev wrote “I had come here too soon; the child was not old enough to appreciate new music.”

Upon arriving in Paris, Prokofiev re-established relations with Diaghilev. There was outstanding business as it will be recalled that Diaghilev had commissioned Chout (The Buffoon) back in 1915. Now he asked Prokofiev to complete this ballet for the Ballets Russes. Prokofiev rented a house in Mantes, north west of Paris, and began revising the score for Chout. There his mother, who was in poor health, was able to join him in Paris as did Lina. The first performance of Chout took place in Paris in May 1921, followed in June in London. On the whole the public were impressed. Not so the critics who were particularly harsh in London. Generally this was more to do with the bizarre storyline than Prokofiev’s music. It starts with one of eight magicians pretending to kill his wife and bringing her back to life with a whip which he claims to be magical. The other seven want to have a go and each borrows the whip, kills his wife only to find its magical qualities don’t work! Chout was to have a short life on the stage but its music and the cubist decor won amongst new fans Henri Matisse, who went on to sketch a portrait of Prokofiev. Prokofiev also met Pablo Picasso and Maurice Ravel and was now taking his place alongside the leading artists of the day.

Back in France Prokofiev turned his attention back to his third piano concerto. He had started work on it in 1917 but could not get his ideas to gel. Now he was able to retrieve some of his jettisoned ideas from his more recent compositions and somehow, blending them together, completed his third piano concerto which sounds all of one piece. In no way does it belie the difficulties he had had and is undoubtedly his most popular concerto.

In the autumn of 1921 he made his third American tour where at long last the first performance of the Love of Three Oranges took place in Chicago as well as the third piano concerto which he himself performed. It is ironic that when The Love of Three Oranges finally did premiere in December 1920, it was an immediate hit in Chicago. Not so in New York a few months later where it provoked hostility. Prokofiev was bewildered by the opposite reactions: “The American season, which had begun so brilliantly, completely fizzled out.” Again the idiosyncratic American response to his music prompted an early return to Europe in whose opera houses The Love of Three Oranges was staged with great success and it remains his most successful opera.

On his return Prokofiev settled into a rented home in the town of Ettal in the Bavarian Alps. Here he would spend most of 1922-23 where he was to care for his ailing mother who was going blind. Lina at this time was studying opera in Milan which was comparatively nearby. They married in September of 1923. During this time he devoted most of his energies to a new opera, the Fiery Angel. This was a purely Prokofiev-inspired endeavour which languished, never to be performed while the composer was alive.

During this Ettal period, Sergei received an invitation to return to Russia to perform with the Leningrad Philharmonic. Moreover, his friends back in the Soviet Union, particularly Miaskovsky, had remained in touch during his American and European travels. They urged Prokofiev to return, letting him know that his music was being performed in Soviet concert halls. His recent marriage and continued devotion to the care of his mother in addition to the harsh economic conditions in the Soviet Union probably weighed heavily in Prokofiev’s decision to turn down this invite. He chose to return to France but he kept his options open for a possible return to his homeland.

And so he returned with Lina and his mother to Paris in the autumn of 1923, in time for the birth of their first son, Sviatoslav, the following February. His mother, Maria Prokofieva who had set him on his musical road, died in December. The events of 1924 had proved distracting to his composing and the only significant work to emerge in 1924 was the symphonic suite he drew from the Love of Three Oranges. Diaghileff also wanted to commission a ballet adaptation of the Love of Three Oranges but Prokofiev did not notgo alongwith it and the two fell out over this for a while

Now a new champion was to emerge in the shape of the conductor, Sergei Koussevitsky. He was Russian, a double bassist, whose second wife, Natalie was the heiress to a wealthy tea merchant. Her money enabled Koussevitsky to study conducting under Nikisch in Berlin and eventually he established the Concerts Koussevitsky in Paris between 1920 and 1929. He was also appointed conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1925 and turned it into the greatest American Orchestra as well as founding the Tanglewood Festival. For the orchestra’s fiftieth anniversary in 1930 Koussevitsky commissioned several European composers to produce new works. These included, Albert Roussel, Bohuslav Martinu, Igor Stravinsky (The Symphony of Psalms) and Sergei Prokofiev (the fourth symphony). For me his greatest commission was that given in 1942 to Benjamin Britten for the opera “Peter Grimes”.

Back in 1923 it was Koussevitzky who had previously commissioned Prokofiev to write his second symphony and whilst he was working on it Koussevitzky premiered in Paris works completed in that prolific year of 1917, but which had remained unperformed including the Cantata, “Seven, They are Seven”, and the First Violin Concerto. The first performance of the concerto in 1923 turned out to be disappointing for the wrong reasons. Expecting new, daring works by Prokofiev, the audience found the concerto too conventional and lyrical to begin with. Gradually this concerto was to gain favour; the Second Symphony enjoyed no such reprieve. Prokofiev aimed to make the symphony “as hard as iron and steel”. The first performance turned out a flop. Even Prokofiev himself, always frank and to the point, found it lacking: “Neither I nor the audience understood anything in it.” One gets the feeling that Prokofiev was somewhat like the character, Doc Martin , played by Martin Clunes, and said what he had to say, as it was. One person who did claim to like the symphony was Françis Poulenc but he was a bridge playing partner of Sergei and had to look him in the eye. He was probably being polite rather than perverse.

Diaghilev also showed enthusiasm and, wanting to make amends, proposed a new ballet, Le Pas d’Acier (The Steel Step). It was he who came up with the idea that the action be set in the Soviet Union. The story involved a romance between a sailor and a young girl factory worker and includes commissars, represented by two bassoons, and with a background of factory machines and sprocket wheels. Not that Diaghilev admired much about the Soviet Union. After the revolution of 1917, he had stayed abroad. The Soviet regime, having failed to lure him back, condemned him in perpetuity as an especially insidious example of bourgeois decadence. Soviet art historians wrote him out of the picture for more than 60 years. The title of the work is curious. I wonder if it had any reference to Stalin whose original name was Iosif Dzhugashvili but whose adopted name meant Man of Steel! Just a thought. Following a further American concert tour with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, Prokofiev and Lina returned to Paris where he completed writing Le Pas d’Acier. The first performances in Paris and London in 1927 were both wildly successful with the public.

Two important events were to take place in 1927 and 1928. Following negotiations with the Soviet authorities on the terms of a concert tour Prokofiev’s first return visit to his homeland took place in January 1927. Everywhere he played, eager crowds packed the concert halls. This return tour was a resounding success. He was celebrated as a Russian hero whose revolutionary music had conquered the West. These accolades were perhaps out of proportion to his real stature in Western music. In December 1928 Prokofiev’s second son Oleg was born in Paris. Matthew has paid homage to him and you will see on the wall opposite as you arrive at the first floor landing Oleg’s sculpted portrait of his father. Oleg lived amongst us in Blackheath from 1970 to his death in 1998 and supported the Halls when they were being restored.

The failure of his Second Symphony weighed heavily with Prokofiev when he returned to Paris. Within the next two years the third and fourth symphonies were to appear and curiously they came into being in almost identical circumstances. Koussevitzky had recently conducted orchestral performances of some excerpts from The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev then set about creating a symphonic suite based on the work which led in turn to thoughts on developing the material into a third symphony. This was given its first performance in May 1929 in Paris. The critics, and Prokofiev for that matter, were much happier with the result.

Meantime, before the completion of the third symphony Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev to create another ballet. This was to be the based on the New Testament tale of the Prodigal Son which was completed fairly quickly. Then in biblical style there came drama. The designer, Georges Rouault, known for his inspirational Christian paintings, did not deliver the sketches for the sets as promised and Diaghilev resorted to Watergate methods to break into his apartment and take them. Then there followed comedy with the leading dancer, Serge Lifar, refusing to turn up at the theatre on the opening night because he disliked his role. So he decided to take to his bed until pangs of guilt at abandoning Diaghilev prompted him to reconsider and turn up late. Finally the good Lord took Diaghilev himself who died two months later in Venice. He was buried at St Michele where over 40 years later he was joined by his old companion in revolution, Igor Stravinsky, each being buried within hailing distance of each other. The loss was an important factor that must have weighed in Prokofiev’s eventual decision to return to the Soviet Union.

It will be recalled that Koussevitsky had commissioned a fourth symphony from Prokofiev for the fiftieth anniversary of his Boston Orchestra. For his part Prokofiev with all the drama surrounding The Prodigal Son, hadn’t had much opportunity to get down to the task. Instead, just as Prokofiev had utilised the Fiery Angel as the genesis for his third symphony, so borrowings from the Prodigal son were made for the new fourth symphony. He was able to justify this in his memoirs thus “ Merely, in the symphony I had the possibility to develop symphonically what a ballet form did not enable me to do. A precedent may be recalled with Beethoven’s ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus, and his Symphony No. 3. (the Eroica)”.

Koussevitzky conducted the first performance in November1930. The public reception was lukewarm with accusations of too much borrowing from The Prodigal Son. This sounds like the result of know it all critics who must have been at work as it is hardly likely that they or the public would have been familiar with the Prodigal Son. Prokofiev did revisit the work in 1947 when he made substantial revisions. My own recording is the original version and although it does not set the world on fire – it is restrained by Prokofiev’s standards – it is worth getting to know.

This visit to the United States in 1930 also resulted in a commission from the Library of Congress, the string quartet No 1. Prokofiev states that he made a study of Beethoven quartets and methods and that this quartet was influenced accordingly. The success of the quartet may well have been down to Prokofiev being more free to write as he wished without having to prove yet again his modernist credentials. He wrote for its finale a profound slow movement, an andante, which he re-scored separately for string orchestra.

His last tour in the USA took place in 1932. However compositionally he seems to have lost direction and there followed a number of poorly received works. First a ballet commissioned by the Paris Opera, “On the Dneiper” renamed “Sur le Borysthène” which closed shortly after it opened. This was followed by the Fourth Piano Concerto for left hand, commissioned in 1931 by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in World War I. It was one in a number of piano works for left hand Wittgenstein had commissioned from major composers including Strauss, Korngold, Hindemith, Britten and most famously, Ravel. Wittgenstein was bitter and a pain in the posterior into the bargain. At his insistence he owned the rights in all these works. He disliked them and was in a position to refuse any performance in his lifetime. When Prokofiev, who was no exception, sent him the completed score, Wittgenstein promptly returned it with a note attached: “I thank you for your concerto, but I do not understand a single note and I shall not play it.”

Soon Prokofiev was at work on a fifth piano concerto. He had not intended the concerto to be difficult but in the end it turned out to be so, as indeed was the case with a good many other compositions of this period. What was the explanation? “In my desire for simplicity I was hampered by the fear of repeating old formulas, of reverting to ‘old simplicity’, which is something all modern composers seek to avoid.” Of the fifth he wrote, “I had enough melodies to make three concertos.” He compacted these numerous ideas into a five movement concerto that lasts only twenty odd minutes. He himself gave the first performance in October 1932 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwängler. There are interesting themes in both the concertos. The fifth seems to owe something to Les Six but it remains obviously Prokofiev. What each of the two seem me to lack is a sense of connection within each work between movements. I do not know if Matthew feels the same but as he wont to say, “The penny has yet to drop”.

Back in 1929 Prokofiev had made a second return to the Soviet Union which had been marked with controversy, the Bolshoi having refused to stage Le Pas d’Acier after pressure from the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM). Now in 1932 Prokofiev embarked on his third concert tour. This tour was a turning point. The RAPM had dissolved and criticism of “anti-Soviet” ideas had died down. Sergei had now entered his forties. Perhaps his middle age moment had come. He was greeted by the public as their hero, with adoration, and he was recognized as one of Russia’s greatest living composers. If the third tour in 1932 began further to convince Prokofiev that he should return for good, the Soviet government employed some good old-fashioned capitalist further incentives to persuade him to stay — they promised him an apartment in Moscow and a new car.

Prokofiev did not however return immediately. He took another four years contemplating his chess board of options during which time he continued living in Paris and composing there the commissions now coming his way from the Soviet Union . In 1936 he suddenly shocked the world by packing his bags for one last time and returning to Russia. My next note will look more closely at the reasons. Meantime, this is what Prokofiev wrote:

“Here is how I feel about it. I care nothing for politics. I’m a composer first and last. Any government that lets me write my music in peace, publishes everything I compose before the ink is dry, and performs every note that comes from my pen is all right with me. In Europe, we all have to fish for performances, cajole conductors and theatre directors; in Russia, they come to me. I can hardly keep up with the demand”

Prokofiev (3)

PROKOFIEV – THE RETURN TO RUSSIA. 1932 – 1941. AND THE REASONS?

It is inevitable that every commentator has referred to Prokofiev’s eventual return in 1936 as that of the Prodigal Son, except me that is. But what were his reasons? Truth to say, we none of us can know. We can all only conjecture. In the West there was shock. The American musical press saw it with disgust as the covert commie coming out. His friends in France, Francis Poulenc for one, were more than surprised in that Sergei had said nothing. After all bridge partners do not usually cancel a rubber without saying. In the Soviet Union he was welcomed home by a worshipping public, he himself hailed as a hero and his return a victory for Socialism. It was none of these things.

Nor does it appear that his decision was made suddenly. To begin with he had not left the Soviet Union in 1918 other than to seek his fortune temporarily in America but at the outset he intended to return. What was intended as a short stay became extended but he never settled in the USA. He might well have thought about returning home after his first visit but he probably preferred to return with something to show for it. He might have thought that he would be refused a further exit visa to go to Chicago for the planned opening of The Love of Three Oranges. He clearly felt more at ease in France than in the USA. There he was able to obtain commissions from Diaghilev who was persona non grata in the Soviet Union. He effectively was turning into an ex-pat who might return one day, but not yet. By 1923 he had discovered that his works were being played back home and in fact he received an invitation to conduct the Leningrad Philharmonic. He turned that down. This was at a time when he had just got married, his mother had been able to join him in the West and his future remained rooted in staying in the West. In 1927 came his first return tour and pressure to return. The 1929 tour produced problems with the Composers Union considering him too modernistic and too formalistic. If Prokofiev was tempted he still had to balance that against commissions from Diaghilev and from Koussevitsky. He also had a new family unit in Paris to consider. It was a balance he had to weigh up which at that time came down on staying.y 1932, Diaghilev having died, one important source for new commissions had dried up. One might well speculate whether Prokofiev was creatively tired with the direction of his music in Europe and America. He had been a proclaimed modernist through his student years, had staked his reputation in Europe as being as revolutionary, if not more so, than Stravinsky and it had become virtually impossible for him to write other music which reflected different facets of his make up. Stylistically he did not develop into a middle period as had, say William Walton, or do what Stravinsky would do, shed his skin and emerge with a new musical persona. Compositionally between 1928 and 1931 he was in a groove and appearing to lack the old inspiration. Now commissions came instead from the Soviet Union which allowed him to showcase the more lyrical and epic sides of his musical character.

However the most compelling reason for his return was that he was a homesick Russian wanting to go home and be with his friends. There may, however, be one other explanation. It comes from Shostakovitch’s memoires, Testimony, edited by Solomon Volkov. Shostakovitch did not take particularly to Prokofiev whom he found self-centred. Still he made one telling comment on this particular topic. It was that Prokofiev was an inveterate gambler who had mounting gambling debts around the world and that the reason for his return to Russia was that this was the only way he could escape his creditors. Whether that be true, I cannot say, but it is a cogent argument. One thing is certain. His return did not stem from political ideology. It made no difference to Sergei Prokofiev whether his political master was Peter the Great or Uncle Joe Stalin.

Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union took several years — from 1932 to 1936 he still considered Paris his home, but he frequently travelled to Moscow where he had a flat. More importantly, he began to receive commissions for new works from the Soviet Union. Prokofiev did not become a permanent Moscow resident until 1936.

One can also wonder as to how any free thinking individual, as Prokofiev undoubtedly was, could possibly have submitted himself to the restraints of the Soviet system. However, such a question is posed with hindsight and not with the eyes and ears of what one knew between 1932 and 1936. The Lenin revolution was about class and economics and not about the arts. Lenin appeared to have little or no aesthetic understanding but felt that in a classless society there would be no proletariat, no bourgeois for whose better understanding a work of art would be prepared and that therefore the artist should be free to find an appropriate level to which the citizen would aspire. The new soviet state was to be a revolutionary modern state and in the 1920’s it was encouraged to reflect that with revolutionary art. The modernist idiom of Prokofiev in France and America would probably have been in keeping at the time. The restraints only came about after Stalin was in complete control and the concept of Socialist Realism first promulgated about 1932. This was more appropriate to books and paintings than to music where realism, let alone socialism, was harder to discern. It was only with the decree following Stalin’s visit to see Lady Macbeth of the Mstensk District by Shostakovitch that in 1936 the repression started. Shostakovitch recognized it immediately with a Soviet Artist’s reply to Justifiable Criticism. Prokofiev was the bright eyed boy, to whom all promises were made, who thought it would not affect him. At that time the political trials and the artistic repression were not known by the idealists in the West. Russia was viewed as a Utopia for classless freedom by Cambridge professors and English poets, not that they went there as did the great American black singer, Paul Robeson. He did not find Nirvana. As for Prokofiev and others like him, they would end up abused…. as well as disabused.

The first commission from the Soviet Union in 1932 was to write the music for the film, Lieutenant Kijé and which Prokofiev soon reworked into the well known suite. The story is based on a verbal slip of the tongue which, to be understood, depends on a correct translation from the Russian. I have read two explanations. The background to the error takes place during an award ceremony before the Tsar. The first explanation is that by adding “ki” to the word for lieutenant and then the suffix “jé”, the citation became “the lieutenant, however” which the Tsar, who can never be wrong or corrected, understood to be a “Lieutenant However”. Thus was born a man who did not exist, who fell in love, got married and had to be killed off. The other explanation is that kijé means a blot; that there was a kijé on the paper and the spokesman referred to Lieutenant Blot. Each version depends upon which unreliable source one accepts. Of the two versions of the orchestral suite, the better known has a saxophone solo; the other a solo baritone singing. It is worth hearing the latter. The music for Lieutenant Kijé had all the popular appeal that had hitherto been missing in much of Prokofiev’s output. I first heard it in a themed concert entitled “Once upon A Time” in the early 50’s conducted by Solti. A word of caution “however”. Don’t go to Debenhams, especially at this time of year and especially not in the Glades at Bromley, just don’t think about it. There you will be “entertained” to so called Christmas carols. Sandwiched between a bilious “Have yourself a very merry Christmas” and a retching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, you will be subjected to an anaemic arrangement of the Troika from Lieutenant Kijé, conceived originally as a post nuptial ride following a drunken wedding, now renamed “Christmas Sleighride”,. I have remonstrated in vain with the staff and suggested they join SOP but they seemed a little bewildered by my complaint!

This period between Paris and Moscow is marked by a number of other new works, the most important of which were the ballet Romeo and Juliet and the Second Violin Concerto. The concerto was not a commission from the USSR but written for the French violinist Robert Soetans who gave the first performance in Madrid in December 1935. It was an immediate success and became even more popular when championed by Jascha Heifetz. The Second Violin Concerto is typical of the other major works of this period and is said to mark a transition from his ‘toccata’ and ‘grotesque’ style into his ‘lyrical’ and classical’ style.

It was the Kirov Theatre which in 1934 commissioned a new ballet from Prokofiev who suggested Romeo and Juliet as the subject. The Kirov were unhappy because although the living can dance, the dying cannot. Prokofiev took it instead to the Bolshoi at Moscow who pronounced it as undanceable and the ballet itself was not performed until December 1938, not in Russia at all. (One internet source refers to it as the Brno Opera House in Prague! I wonder if the geographic knowledge of the anonymous American author indicates that he perhaps comes from Paris – Texas). In its original version Prokofiev wrote a happy ending where the lovers do not die and are able to keep on dancing. Lost parts of the original score were found in 2008. According to a columnist in the Independent, who is an absolute mine of information, mostly unreliable, Stalin himself would not allow Shakespeare to be altered and insisted that the story was put back. Prokofiev was not one to waste music and composed two orchestral suites and a piano transcription (Opus 75) of the ballet score in 1936 and 1937 with enough material over to compose a third suite in 1946. These transcriptions were warmly accepted by the public.

The twentieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution took place in 1937. By this time Prokofiev, resembling somewhat the Master of the Queen’s Musick, was happy to do his bit,. He wrote a Cantata, a forerunner for Alexander Nevsky. It is for a large orchestra, including three accordions, two choirs, is exceedingly noisy and lasts 45 minutes. It depicts the events leading up to the revolution which takes place in the sixth movement. This contains (inter alia) machine gun firing, the wail of fire engines, the sound of sirens, dancing to accordions, marching feet and the words of Lenin leading the proletariat. Later there is a solemn oath by Stalin at Lenin’s tomb to uphold the revolution. Prokofiev had grasped the concept of toeing the party line and Socialist Realism in music. Here was a work that matched all the requirements….but for one thing. Josef Stalin, the great Leader and Musicologist, did not like it and the work was withdrawn, never to be played again in Prokofiev’s lifetime.

Lieutenant Kijé had marked the beginning of a period of intense interest by Prokofiev in film music. He made a special trip to Hollywood as a musical ambassador in 1938 to study the techniques there, following which he scored the music for Eisenstein’s epic film, Alexander Nevsky in 1939, followed by several films in the war culminating with Ivan the Terrible (1942-5).
The soundtrack of the film of Alexander Nevsky sounds a bit worn these days but we are fortunate that Prokofiev immediately transcribed the material as a cantata which is one of the most exciting choral events in the calendar. The opening chorus of “In Our Native Russian Land” demonstrates that Prokofiev was every bit a nationalist as Mussorgsky or Borodin. The film itself has a number of co-incidental similarities with another film score of the time, Henry V by Walton in 1944. Both were written either during or under the clouds of impending war. Both contain historical subjects and tingle with patriotism. Both have battle scenes, that in Nevsky, the battle on ice, and Henry V, once more to the breach, at Agincourt. I wonder if anyone has thought of having them as bedfellows in the same concert… with Matthew Taylor conducting!

Apart from films Prokofiev was writing incidental music for the stage as well and as prolific in this field as Sibelius. His scores included several plays including Egyptian Nights (1934), Boris Godunov (1936), Eugene Onegin (1936), and Hamlet (1937). These are rarely to be heard but Egyptian Nights will be played in the LPO Festival.

At much the same time, soon after his full return in 1936 Prokofiev was asked by the Central Children’s Theatre to write a new musical symphony just for children. The idea was to cultivate ‘musical tastes in children from the first years of school.’ Prokofiev set about the project of writing a young person’s guide to the orchestra and completed Peter and the Wolf in four days. Its public debut was, in the composer’s words, inauspicious and the attendance was rather poor. I have no idea what royalties were paid in the Soviet system but by rights, if one compares with Howard Blake who wrote the music for “the Snowman”, Prokofiev should have been a multi-millionaire as a result. Mind you, Peter and The Wolf should now be kept from children as not being politically correct. It contains hunting to begin with and doubtless the Animal Rights movement would canvass for the protection of wolves!

Following his return it could be said that Prokofiev could do little wrong. He would have been aware of changes in the official outlook but they did not appear to affect him as they had Shostakovitch whose opera, the Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, brought down the full wrath of Stalin in January 1936. The change in the process of composing music was stark. In the West, a composer’s creativity was tempered only by economic realities, the ability to obtain commissions and the ability to be performed. In the Soviet Union, the environment became completely different. From the beginning, the Soviet Union was centrally controlled by party leaders in Moscow who dictated everything that was to be created, consumed or conceived. Thus artistic freedom was non-existent. Creativity was stifled by the whims of appointed party bureaucrats. In 1932 Stalin introduced his cultural policy of ‘Socialist Realism’ extending it a little later with guidelines for composers.

The important cultural ‘isms’ in the West, cubism, surrealism, atonalism were all pre-first world war concepts and therefore to be regarded as decadent. The main attention of the Soviet composer must be directed towards the victorious progressive principles of reality, towards all that is heroic, bright and beautiful. This distinguishes the spiritual world of Soviet man and must be embodied in musical images full of beauty and strength. Socialist Realism demands an implacable struggle against folk-negating modernistic directions that are typical of the decay of contemporary bourgeois art and culture.

Prokofiev began to feel the cold wind with the Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution in 1936-37, which was rejected as too modernist. Not put off by this he began a new opera based on the exploits of Semyon Kotko, a young Soviet hero during the occupation of Ukraine by the Germans after the revolution. As with Alexander Nevsky the Germans were the villains of the plot which was to have unforeseen consequences, not only for Prokofiev’s reputation but even worse for the director, Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Prior to 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were politically poles apart. The signing of the Molotov – Ribbentrop pact on 31 August 1939 took the West by surprise, paving the way for the joint Hitler/Stalin invasion of Poland the next day. Its effect on Prokofiev was that Germany was suddenly an ally of the Soviet Union. The imminent staging of Semyon Kotko with its portrayal of a brutal German occupation was no longer politically acceptable. Meyerhold, who had been a long time friend of Prokofiev going back to “The Gambler” and who was half way through producing Semyon Kotko, was arrested, disappearing in 1984 fashion, and executed in 1940. Prokofiev sought out Eisenstein to ask him to take over the production but he kept his head down. In fact Eisentstein was actually producing Die Valkyrie at Moscow for the benefit of the new found friends. Alexander Nevsky already had gone out on release in 1939 and this was also withdrawn from the screens. Prokofiev then proposed replacing the role of the Germans in the opera with the nationality of the villains being unspecified but this was not acceptable to the authorities. Semyon Kotko was removed from the official repertoire and not rehabilitated until 1970.

A further consequence for Prokofiev of the Soviet Union’s rapprochement with Germany was severed ties with France, the United States, and the rest of the West. There was no longer any need for Prokofiev to travel abroad as an ambassador of music and it was decreed he could no longer tour outside the Soviet Union. A further knock on effect was the Prokofiev family life. Foreigners were mistrusted. Lina was Spanish by birth, in itself a dangerous fact in Stalin’s paranoid state. The boys had been sent to an English speaking school which was closed down. Strains were taking place in the marital relationship and Prokofiev began playing away. It was not with Moscow Dynamo.

Sergei had first met Eleonora Damskaya in the spring of 1917 and they had had a brief but fiery affair before his departure for America. She became a harpist with the orchestra at the Maryinsky. In 1934, they were to meet again at a concert in Leningrad. Prokofiev, we know, was already married and the father of two sons; Eleonora had long been married also. Things happened as they do. It was probably only for old time’s sake but in March 1935 Eleonora gave birth to a boy she called Alexander. She made no secret who was the boy’s father. Apparently the little Alexander looked like a carbon copy of his famous father (not unlikely as Prokofiev and presumably the baby were both bald). Prokofiev knew about Alexander and always tried to help him and his mother.

In 1939 he met the poet Mira Mendelssohn when she was 24 and he 48. Things happened as they do. Prokofiev was seriously in love and moved in with Mira. Lina was none too pleased. In 1940 Prokofiev began writing his last complete opera, The Duenna (Betrothal in a Monastery). Mira collaborated on the Duenna and wrote many of the verses. It is based on a ballad opera of Sheridan, written following The Rivals with music by Thomas Linley. It was a pastiche opera more in the tradition of John Gay’s Beggars Opera. The story is one of elopement, set in Seville. It involves drunken monks but no barber. The Prokofiev opera had its staging delayed by the outbreak of war. When it finally premiered after the war in 1946, it was received with acclaim all over the Soviet Union.

Mira Mendelssohn also later helped write the lyrics for the next opera, “War and Peace”, which was to be the largest project that Prokofiev was to undertake. Following the German attack on the USSR on 22nd June 1941, important composers, writers and artists were sent for safety to Malchick in the Caucasus. Having already arranged that Mira would accompany him, Prokofiev also asked Lina to join him. However, when told that that woman would also be going, Lina put her foot down and refused to go and decided to stick it out with the children in Moscow for the duration. The marriage was effectively over but Lina was not prepared to agree to a divorce. Ultimately, Sergey and Mira were to marry in March 1948 but that and the consequences form part of another tragic story to tell and to be dealt with in the Post War Years.