Читать книгу Great musicians and their amusing stories - Nadia Koval - Страница 19

Sergei Prokofiev (1891—1953)

1. Sergey Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sontsovka (now Sontsivka, Pokrovsk Raion, Donetsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine), a remote rural estate in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire.

2. Sergei took to music at a very young age, an interest which his parents enthusiastically supported. He had already written a few piano pieces by the time he discovered opera, a product of a family trip to Moscow, and his three act The Giant (1900) commemorated his childhood games in operatic form.

3. In the summer of 1917, Prokofiev composed his first symphony, the Classical, which was written, he said, in the style Haydn would have used if he had been alive.

4. Prokofiev’s first major orchestral success was the Scythian Suite, compiled from music he composed for Sergei Diaghilev. Henri Matisse was commissioned to draw the portrait of Prokofiev, which was published in the program for the season of the Ballets Russes in Paris in May 1921.

5. Prokofiev was a passionate chess player who became friends with world chess champions José Raúl Capablanca, whom he beat in 1914, and Mikhail Botvinnik.

6. Prokofiev’s nine ballets make up an important part of his body of work, but he took to the genre slowly. His early sensibilities were a better fit for operas and cantatas, and it was only with the success and heavy-handed influence of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev he began to work in this challenging, risky genre. Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Cinderella (1944) are among his best-remembered works in any category.

7. In 1938, Prokofiev collaborated with film director Eisenstein on Alexander Nevsky. Prokofiev composed some of his most brilliant and dramatic music for this work. He later adapted much of his score into a large-scale Cantata for mezzo-soprano, orchestra, and chorus which was extensively performed and recorded.

8. Prokofiev was already considering making an opera from Tolstoy’s War and Peace when Germany invaded Russia on June 22, 1941. The conflict spurred him on and he completed his original composition version within two years.

9. Towards the end of his life, Prokofiev enjoyed personal and artistic support from a new generation of Russian performers, notably the pianist Richter and cellist Rostropovich, for whom he composed his Symphony-Concerto.

10. Prokofiev died at the age of 61 on March 5, 1953, but unfortunately very few noticed as it was the very day Stalin’s death was announced.