Composed: 1918
Premiered: 1918, St. Petersburg
Duration: 14 minutes

Prokofiev as a young man tended to be tied to the piano. He habitually composed at the keyboard, but discovered that themes invented away from the piano were, in his own estimation, often better. Amid the chaotic conditions in Petrograd in 1916 and 1917, just before the Russian revolution, Prokofiev set out to compose a symphony, and to do it without a piano. He called it a Classical Symphony, in part because he used Haydn as a model, and partly “to tease the geese,” as he said, implying that it would turn out to be a modern classic. Prokofiev wrote of it, “It seems to me that had Haydn continued to live into our time, he would have retained his own way of writing, at the same time adding something new.” 

Well, it is now more than a hundred years later, and we perhaps understand Haydn better than Prokofiev did. Haydn was a committed innovator; it seems unlikely that he would have written anything less than totally modern music in any era. Prokofiev retained Haydn’s forms and transparent orchestration, but added “something new” – abrupt and startling harmonic shifts. The melodies are entirely his own; he rejected the kind of thing Stravinsky was doing, altering the rhythms and harmonies of existing Classical works. As for the composer’s prediction that this would become a classic in its own right, he was absolutely correct. From the very first performance (in 1918, in what was shortly to become Leningrad), the Classical Symphony has been a favourite with audiences and a challenge for orchestras – it’s a lot harder to play than the Haydn symphonies which served as Prokofiev’s model. 

Program note by the late Dr. C.W. Helleiner.