Prokofiev was born in Sosnovka in the Ukraine, the son of a
well-to-do agricultural engineer. Encouraged by his pianist
mother, he made rapid musical strides. He was a gifted pianist
himself, and his earliest piano piece dates from his fifth year;
by the age of 11 he had written two operas.
In 1904 he entered the St Petersburg Conservatoire, but the
wilful and arrogant young Prokofiev found the lessons from Liadov
and Rimsky-Korsakov dull and old-fiishioned: he gained more
stimulation from his friendships with the composers Nikolai
Myaskovsky and Boris Asafyev. Also important to his development
were lessons with Anna Esipova, which increased the expressive
range of his already strong and brilliant playing.
Recognition came steadily, and in 1911 Prokofiev saw his first
works in print and his first public orchestral performance. Many
critics of the time were bewildered by the unusual sonorities of
his music, and the
premiere of his First piano concerto, performed by the composer
himself in 1912, caused a furore, giving rise to his reputation as the enfant terrible of Russian music -
something hard to understand now when listening to this sparkling
and attractive work.
On graduating from the Conservatoire in 1914, Prokofiev
immediately travelled to London, where he met the Russian ballet
impresario Sergei Diaghilev and was greatly impressed by
Stravinsky's ballets. The impact of The rite of spring is
evident in the music Prokofiev intended for a ballet for
Diaghilev, Ala and Lolli, but which found its way instead
into the savage Scythian Suite. A second work, Chout,
was also aimed at Diaghilev, but was not finally mounted until
1921 in Paris.
Returning to Russia, Prokofiev spent the greater part of the
World War I period in St Petersburg. There an operatic commission,
The gambler, foundered at the rehearsal stage, but his
First violin concerto and the First symphony (the
"Classical') had happier outcomes, and the latter — a conscious
re-creation of the wit and clarity of Haydn's style — brought him
international success.
In the turmoil that followed the Russian revolution in 1917,
Prokofiev moved to the United States, where his vivid fantasy
opera. The love for three oranges, was commissioned by the
Chicago Opera. However, it was Pans that increasingly attracted
Prokofiev, and he moved there in 1920 to revise his ballet
Chout for Diaghilev. While living in France he also completed
the superb Third piano concerto, a virtuoso work whose
combination of glittering ebullience alongside wistful melancholy
is totally characteristic of its composer.
Prokofiev's works of the next decade include the controversial
machine-age Second symphony and two further ballets for
Diaghilev - Le pas d'acier, about Soviet industrialization,
and L'enfant prodigue.
In 1933 Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union, and in the next
three years re-established links with his homeland. The Kirov
Theatre in Leningrad commissioned the ballet Romeo and Juliet
in 1934, and in 1936 Prokofiev, his wife — a Spanish singer —
and their two sons took up residence in Moscow. Romeo and
Juliet was not popular with the Soviet authorities, who at the
same time condemned Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of
Mtsensk. Prokofiev responded by turning his hand to
utilitarian and patriotic music, including the score for Sergei
Eisenstein's film Alexander Nevsky, re-arranged in 1939 as
a cantata. His operas fared less well in Soviet Russia: Semyon
Kotko was swiftly dropped; performance of the second. The
duenna, was postponed for several years; and his third. War
and peace, a project particularly dear to him, remained
unperformed at his death.
During the 1940s Prokofiev's health underwent a gradual
decline. His imposing Fifth symphony of 1945 struck a
renewed note of heroic assurance, but continuing difficulties with
the authorities culminated in bitter attacks on him in 1948 and
the banning of many of his earlier works. His spirit was broken,
and the works of his final years have the air of feeble sops to
the dominant Soviet ideologies. He died in 1953. ironically on
exactly the same day as his chief persecutor, Joseph Stalin.
