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PROKOKIEV Composer Sergei Prokofiev, born on April 23, 1891 in Sontsovka (Ukraine), passed away on March 5, 1953 in Nikolina Gora, near Moscow. Following studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under the tutelage, among others, of Rimsky-Korsakov, pianist-composer Prokofiev frequented the "Contemporary Music Soirées" where his nnovative, radical and willfully provocative style was already evident in his First Piano Concerto for Piano, his Second Sonata and, more particularly, his Second Concerto (1913). In 1915-16, he wrote the opera "The Gambler", after Dostoevsky, and a ballet commisioned by Diaghilev, "Ala and Lolly" which would later become "The Scythian Suite". Despite his revolutionary temperament, he left Russia in 1917 and travelled to the U.S.A. via Japan. He spent 10 years of his life in the U.S.A., France and Germany. During this period, he composed operas ("Love for Three Oranges" in 1919, "The Flaming Angel" in 1920-27), ballets ("Chout" in 1920, "The Age of Steel" in 1927 and "Prodigal Son" in 1929) and symphonies (Second and Third Symphonies in 1924 and 1928). He however gradually started to resettle in the USSR in 1927, accepted Soviet citizenship and became the most prominent official composer along with Shostakovitch. His productivity intensified with the composition of the ballet "Romeo and Juliet", music for the films "Lieutenant Kije" and "Alexander Nevsky", the operas "Simeon Kotko" and "Betrothal in a Nunnery", concertos for the piano, etc. With the coming of the war he was evacuated with other Soviet intellectuals to the Caucasian region where he composed music for Eisenstein's film "Ivan the Terrible" and his Fifth Symphony. Henceforth, the success of his newer works like the ballet "Cinderella" would be overshadowed by the publication in 1948 of the cultural purge's famous "Manifesto of Zhdanov", criticizing his and many other Soviet composers' formalism and modernism. His later works (Sonata for Piano and Cello, the Seventh Symphony, etc) reflect a real effort towards "clear musical speech", but his passing away was barely noticed as it occurred on the eve of Stalin's death. |
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