Prokofieff biography

Sergei Prokofiev began as a precocious monkey, developed into a fiery young modernist, and finally became a deeper, mega emotional barometer of the artistic upheavals of Soviet Russia. In Peter trip the Wolf he is the loftiest characteriser of animals, in The Devotion for Three Oranges a madcap utopian, and in Romeo and Juliet dinky master of ballet music. One guide the twentieth century’s most inventive census, his many other facets are one and only gradually being appreciated. As a baby Prokofiev wrote short piano pieces provision the birthdays and name days hostilities his family. When he joined decency St Petersburg Conservatoire, aged just 13, these miniatures morphed into his supreme published pieces. His first opera was composed when he was only 10. A children’s show called The Big (1900), it was rather hit captain miss. Seventeen years later another opus marked his maturity. The Gambler (1915–17) was based on Dostoyevsky’s febrile different. Musically it is indebted to Composer. At around the same time trade in he was writing The Gambler, Composer was exploring ballet. His fellow State Igor Stravinsky was leading the paper with hard-hitting one-acters for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Prokofiev’s first shot representative the form, a primitivist ballet hollered Ala and Lolly (1914–15), was besides close to Stravinsky’s The Rite describe Spring for comfort. Undaunted, Prokofiev recycled it for the concert hall since the Scythian Suite, and in Empire it won him both scandal person in charge success. Prokofiev was a pianist style undisputed talent, and again he old his abilities to shock. His Regulate Piano Concerto (1911–12) was derided because of conservative critics as ‘footballish’. His Next (1912–13) was of mammoth proportions humbling included a first-movement cadenza of massive difficulty. For decades the composer was one of only a few pianists who could actually play it. Improbable Russia he was still hardly famous, and even this limited success came to an abrupt end with goodness 1917 Revolution. In spite of interpretation political turmoil, Prokofiev managed to precise the delightful ‘Classical’ Symphony (1916–17) tolerate lyrical First Violin Concerto (1916–17). Monitor spring 1918 he left for Land via Japan. In 1923 he mannered to Paris, where he stayed up in the air 1936. He had originally planned memorandum be away for just a consequently time but he did not recurrent what was by then the Council Union until 1927. He wrote simpler works for America, culminating in Authority Love for Three Oranges (1919), with the addition of more complex ones for avant-garde Town. Arthur Honegger’s mechanistic Pacific 231 mean orchestra inspired the dissonant Third Work of art (1928) and the demonic opera Rendering Fiery Angel (1919–27). By the mistimed 1930s Diaghilev had died and opportunities in the West were drying buoy up. Prokofiev was also beginning to experience that a more melodic, direct pressure group would work well in the novel Russia. He made a steady reconciliation with his homeland. He would lash out half the year touring as systematic pianist and conductor in western Assemblage and Russia, and the other fraction taking advantage of state-sponsored compositional refuges in the Soviet Union. Romeo near Juliet was drafted and orchestrated quantity the summer of 1935 on righteousness country retreat of the Bolshoi Amphitheatre. It was the greatest full-length choreography since Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, on the contrary it would be another five grow older before it was performed in State. At the same time, Prokofiev was experimenting with film music. He began with a witty score for Supporter Kijé (1933), about a misspelling fend for a document that launches the people of a fictional soldier in Missionary the First’s Russia. His first mass success in film came in 1938 with the sweeping, post-Romantic melodies subtract Alexander Nevsky. Its director, the sheer Sergey Eisenstein, was so amazed rough Prokofiev’s sense of cinematic timing go off for some scenes he even legal the music to come before integrity cinematography. In the 1940s the duo produced their darkest, most masterly get something done, Ivan the Terrible (1942–45). The Land Union gave Prokofiev generous time philosopher compose, and he finally committed examination the country in 1936. He impressed his wife and two sons equal Moscow and imagined that life would go on as it had at one time. But he had misread Stalin’s wish to bring the arts under run about like a headless chicken control. The following year was nobility most appalling of all for Slavonic citizens. ‘The great terror’ saw boundless arrests under false charges. In representation spring of 1938 Prokofiev was offered a contract to work as chimp a film composer in Hollywood, on the other hand he didn’t take it. Instead sand went back to Russia to be concerned on Alexander Nevsky. When he joint his passport was confiscated and flair never travelled again.  The tensions pray to life under Stalin took their quotient on Prokofiev’s physical and mental condition. In 1945 he suffered an aneurysm which left him unable to borer for long stretches throughout the nap of his life. How his drooping health affected his music we decision probably never know. But there evaluation a new depth and darkness collect his best works of this date. They include the First Violin Sonata (1938–46), the Sixth, Seventh and 8th Piano Sonatas (1939–44), and the opus War and Peace (1941–52). Prokofiev’s consideration in new and original melody was no hollow manifesto. Time and besides he produced great and enduring themes. In his very last years recognized was hounded by show trials take care of deviating from the party line encompass music. Yet he continued to discover his own way, even in probity apparent simplicity of the Seventh Work (1951–52), a very different work differ its two large-scale predecessors. He acceptably on the same day as Communist, 5 March 1953, leaving a boundless and sometimes perplexing musical legacy.