Description

SERGEI SERGEYEVICH PROKOFIEV (APRIL 23 [APRIL 11, OLD STYLE], 1891, SONTSOVKA, UKRAINE, RUSSIAN EMPIRE — MARCH 5, 1953, MOSCOW, RUSSIA, U.S.S.R.)

 

 

 

 

Sergei Prokofiev was born into a family of agriculturalists. Village life, with its peasant songs, left a permanent imprint on him. His mother, a good pianist, became the highly gifted child’s first mentor in music and arranged trips to the opera in Moscow. A high evaluation was put upon the boy’s talent by a Moscow composer and teacher, Sergey Taneyev, on whose recommendation the Russian composer Reinhold Glière twice went to Sontsovka in the summer months to become young Sergey’s first teacher in theory and composition and to prepare him for entrance into the conservatory at St. Petersburg. The years Prokofiev spent at that institution—1904 to 1914 — were a period of swift creative growth. His teachers were struck by his originality, and when he graduated he was awarded the Anton Rubinstein Prize in piano for a brilliant performance of his own first large-scale work—the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major. The conservatory gave Prokofiev a firm foundation in the academic fundamentals of music, but he avidly sought musical innovation. His enthusiasms were supported by progressive circles advocating musical renewal. Prokofiev’s first public appearance as a pianist took place in 1908 at a concert series, Evenings of Contemporary Music, sponsored by such a group in St. Petersburg. A little later he met with friendly sympathy in a similar circle in Moscow, which helped him make his first appearances as a composer, at the Moscow summer symphony seasons of 1911 and 1912. Prokofiev’s musical talent developed rapidly. He studied the compositions of Igor Stravinsky, particularly the early ballets, but maintained a critical attitude toward his countryman’s brilliant innovations. Contacts with the then-new currents in theatre, poetry, and painting also played an important role in Prokofiev’s development. He was attracted by the work of modernist Russian poets; by the paintings of the Russian followers of Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso; and by the theatrical ideas of Vsevolod Meyerhold, whose experimental productions were directed against an obsolescent naturalism. In 1914 Prokofiev became acquainted with the great ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, who became one of his most influential advisers for the next decade and a half.

 

 

TRACKLIST

 

 

6153 PROKOFIEV – Prelude, Op. 12, No. 7

6160 PROKOFIEV – Marche, Op. 12, No. l

6210 PROKOFIEV – Sarcasms, Op. 17, Nos. 1 and 2

6253 PROKOFIEV – Gavotte, Op. 12, No. 2

6344 PROKOFIEV – Rigaudon, Op. 12, No. 3

6377 GLAZOUNOV – Gavotte, Op. 49, No. 3, D

6391 PROKOFIEV – Toccata, Op. 11

6477 PROKOFIEV – Intermezzo from the Opera “Love for Three Oranges”

6512 SCRIABIN – Prelude, Op. 45, #3; Winged Poem, Op. 51, No. 3

6591 MOUSSORGSKY – “Pictures/Exhibition” Bydlo; Ballet of Chicks in Shells

6774 PROKOFIEV – Scherzo, Op. 12, No. 10

6826 PROKOFIEV – Tales of the Old Grandmother, Op. 32, No. 3

7001 RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF-PROKOFIEFF – Fantasia on “Sheherazade”, Op. 35

7388 MIASKOVSKY – Grillen (Whims) Op. 25, Nos. l and 6