Sergey Prokofiev was born in 1891 to a family of farmers in rural Russia. With the guidance of his mother, who had had some musical training, Prokofiev was able to get piano lessons and gain exposure to performances of classical music. A precocious and tremendously able musician, Prokofiev was admitted to the Conservatory in St. Petersburg at 13; he then spent 10 years studying with some of the greatest musical figures in Russia at the time. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1914, winning the Anton Rubinstein Prize for his performance of his own remarkable Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major. He went on to compose four more concertos for piano in addition to a number of symphonies, film scores, operas, and ballets, not counting numerous shorter works for piano and other instruments.
Trips to Moscow in the years just after 1910 acquainted the pianist-composer with the latest developments in literature, particularly the modernist Russian poets, in art (Prokofiev loved Picasso), and in theatre. In 1914 Prokofiev met Diaghilev (with whom Stravinsky collaborated in his astonishing ballets at about the same time), and the impresario remained an important friend of the composer.
The trend in the arts of the time was anti-nationalistic, the romanticism of the 19th century having been supplanted by a protean modernism. Interestingly enough, 1917—the year of two revolutions in Russia—became one of Prokofiev’s most productive: the first violin concerto, a symphony, and several piano sonatas were written and the composer began work on the magnificent Piano Concerto No. 3 in C-Major as well as the opera Love for Three Oranges. It was not until 1935, however, that Prokofiev turned his attention to Shakespeare, after reading a scenario based on Romeo and Juliet by Julian Piotrovsky and Sergey Radlov. The composer quickly completed the music for an entire ballet. Prokofiev revised this work extensively in preparation for its 1940 debut in St. Petersburg. He also arranged from the ballet score two orchestral suites, parts of which you will hear today.
Prokofiev enjoyed world-wide fame as both soloist and composer. He made several concert trips to the United States, and while in Hollywood, he studied film music and the technical difficulties of creating sound for film. A quick learner, Prokofiev went on to write the music for Sergey Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky and, later, Ivan the Terrible. But his tiring concert tours in the US and in Europe caught up with the Russian, who missed his homeland. Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union definitively just before World War II.
A lifelong workaholic, Prokofiev suffered from exhaustion in his later years, that condition made worse by his being censured by the Central Committee of the Soviet Community Party (not uncommon for many Soviet artists of the time, many of whom were labelled “degenerate” while others were “disappeared”). Nonetheless, he kept up a dizzying pace of composition, innovative as ever, full of Russian traditional elements. He died suddenly in 1953 of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was the same year that Stalin died.
Today’s performance continues the Literature in Music theme initiated in the previous EPO concert. Prokofiev’s ballet more closely follows the scenario of Piotrovsky and Radlov than it does Shakespeare’s well-known play. In fact, the 1935 version of Prokofiev’s ballet came to a happy ending, neither young person dying for love. But Russian censors disapproved of the bromidic ending of what was known to be a tragedy, and Prokofiev made that change in his 1940 revision of the ballet music.
Here are today’s selections, drawn from both suites:
The Montagues and the Capulets, the two warring families in Shakespeare’s play, are introduced first. Dissonant chords followed by a strident and angular melody may well suggest where the play is headed.
“The Young Juliet” section follows, and the tone could scarcely be more different. Light, almost whimsical melodies—first sung by the clarinet, later by the flute—depict the young woman as she prepares for the dance where she will meet Romeo (though his identity will be hidden behind a mask).
The somewhat pompous music of the “Minuet” comes next, the musical occasion for “Masks.” Here, disguised, Romeo Montague and his friends sneak into a ball put on by the Capulet family, their sworn enemies, and Romeo catches a fateful glimpse of Juliet.
The balcony scene contains some of the most beautiful, romantic (though never sentimentalized) music that Prokofiev wrote. The section begins quietly, gently and develops into rich, lush lines as the love of the two young people grows.
The concluding section depicts the death first of Mercutio, then Tybalt (as Romeo avenges his friend Mercutio’s death). Ironically, this is to have been Romeo’s wedding day, but the music lunges and dives as the swords clash murderously. Tybalt’s body is carried offstage to the dirge-like drumbeat of timpani, and the music that concludes the movement features the menacing sounds of angry brass instruments.