Discover the music of Prokofiev through his diaries
From student days at St Petersburg until 1933, just before he finally returned from the West to live out the remainder of his life in the Soviet Union, Prokofiev kept a uniquely revealing diary to which he confided his innermost thoughts, the struggles and triumphs of his creative life; his spiritual strivings; his relationships with lovers, friends, fellow musicians and other prominent artists; the events and encounters
of his turbulent life at the centre of the most explosive period of 20th-century art.
The Prokofiev Diaries are explored by Anthony Phillips, their English translator, and Simon Callow as Prokofiev on Sunday 22 January, 3.30pm.
Supported by Mr Leonid and Mrs Olga Makharinsky
From student days at St Petersburg until 1933, just before he finally returned from the West to live out the remainder of his life in the Soviet Union, Prokofiev kept a uniquely revealing diary to which he confided his innermost thoughts, the struggles and triumphs of his creative life; his spiritual strivings; his relationships with lovers, friends, fellow musicians and other prominent artists; the events and encounters
of his turbulent life at the centre of the most explosive period of 20th-century art.
The Prokofiev Diaries are explored by Anthony Phillips, their English translator, and Simon Callow as Prokofiev on Sunday 22 January, 3.30pm.
Supported by Mr Leonid and Mrs Olga Makharinsky
Symphony No. 1
May 1917: "When our classically inclined musicians and professors (to my mind faux-classical) hear this symphony, they will be bound to scream in protest at this new example of Prokofiev's insolence, look how he will not let even Mozart lie quiet in his grave but must come prodding at him with his grubby hands, contaminating the pure classical pearls with horrible Prokofievish dissonances."
Performed on Wednesday 1 February, 7.30pm
May 1917: "When our classically inclined musicians and professors (to my mind faux-classical) hear this symphony, they will be bound to scream in protest at this new example of Prokofiev's insolence, look how he will not let even Mozart lie quiet in his grave but must come prodding at him with his grubby hands, contaminating the pure classical pearls with horrible Prokofievish dissonances."
Performed on Wednesday 1 February, 7.30pm
Chout
May 1915: "Unexpectedly, these two or three weeks in May produced a very respectable crop of more than fifty fragments of material for the future ballet, a huge amount, all of it infused with a strong national flavour. All the time I was composing, I was conscious of being a Russian composer, my clowns were Russian clowns, and this feeling revealed a whole new, previously untapped, field of creativity. Perhaps this accounts for the ease with which the shapes and curls and whorls of these themes came to me. "
Chout (excerpts) performed on Wednesday 25 January, 7.30pm
May 1915: "Unexpectedly, these two or three weeks in May produced a very respectable crop of more than fifty fragments of material for the future ballet, a huge amount, all of it infused with a strong national flavour. All the time I was composing, I was conscious of being a Russian composer, my clowns were Russian clowns, and this feeling revealed a whole new, previously untapped, field of creativity. Perhaps this accounts for the ease with which the shapes and curls and whorls of these themes came to me. "
Chout (excerpts) performed on Wednesday 25 January, 7.30pm
Egyptian Nights
"After Lieutenant Kije I wrote music for Egyptian Nights produced by the Moscow Kamerny Theatre. This was an interesting attempt to combine Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra describing Cleopatra's youth, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra which deals with the end of her life, and a monologue from the poem Egyptian Nights by Pushkin."
Incidental music performed on Saturday 28 January, 7.30pm
"After Lieutenant Kije I wrote music for Egyptian Nights produced by the Moscow Kamerny Theatre. This was an interesting attempt to combine Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra describing Cleopatra's youth, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra which deals with the end of her life, and a monologue from the poem Egyptian Nights by Pushkin."
Incidental music performed on Saturday 28 January, 7.30pm
Piano Concerto No. 5
1932: "I had not intended the concerto to be difficult and at first had even contemplated calling it 'Music for Piano and Orchestra'. In the end it turned out to be complicated, as indeed was the case with a good many other compositions of this period. In my desire for simplicity I was hampered by the fear of repeating old formulas, of reverting to the 'old simplicity;', which is something all modern composers seek to avoid. I searched for a new simplicity only to discover that this new simplicity, with its novel forms and, chiefly, new tonal structure, was not understood."
Performed by Steven Osborne on Wednesday 18 January, 7.30pm
1932: "I had not intended the concerto to be difficult and at first had even contemplated calling it 'Music for Piano and Orchestra'. In the end it turned out to be complicated, as indeed was the case with a good many other compositions of this period. In my desire for simplicity I was hampered by the fear of repeating old formulas, of reverting to the 'old simplicity;', which is something all modern composers seek to avoid. I searched for a new simplicity only to discover that this new simplicity, with its novel forms and, chiefly, new tonal structure, was not understood."
Performed by Steven Osborne on Wednesday 18 January, 7.30pm
Violin Concerto No. 2
1935: "In 1935 a group of admirers of the French violinist Soetens asked me to write a violin concerto for him, giving him exclusive rights to perform it for one year. I readily agreeed since I had been intending to write something for the violin at that time and had accumulated some material. The variety of places in which that concerto was written is a reflection of the nomadic concert-tour existence I led at that time: the principal theme of the first movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the second movement in Voronezh, the orchestration I completed in Baku, while the first performance was given in Madrid, in December 1935. "
Performed by Janine Jansen on Wednesday 1 February, 7.30pm
1935: "In 1935 a group of admirers of the French violinist Soetens asked me to write a violin concerto for him, giving him exclusive rights to perform it for one year. I readily agreeed since I had been intending to write something for the violin at that time and had accumulated some material. The variety of places in which that concerto was written is a reflection of the nomadic concert-tour existence I led at that time: the principal theme of the first movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the second movement in Voronezh, the orchestration I completed in Baku, while the first performance was given in Madrid, in December 1935. "
Performed by Janine Jansen on Wednesday 1 February, 7.30pm
Symphony No. 6
1947: "Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds which cannot be healed, which must not be forgotten."
Performed on Wednesday 18 January, 7.30pm
1947: "Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds which cannot be healed, which must not be forgotten."
Performed on Wednesday 18 January, 7.30pm
