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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
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 orchestras 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 Franis 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
Prokofievs 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
Olegs 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, hadnt 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
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