A study in contrasts, the career of Sergey Prokofiev spanned the
globe, leaving him witness to the most significant political and
historical events of the first half of the twentieth century. In
1918, after completing a program of studies at the St. Petersburg
conservatory, Prokofiev escaped Russia for the United States and
later France where, like most emigre artists of the time, he made
Paris his home. During these hectic years, he composed three
ballets and three operas, fulfilled recording contracts, and played
recitals of tempestuous music. Scores were stored in suitcases,
scenarios and librettos drafted on hotel letterhead. The constant
uprooting and transience fatigued him, but he regarded himself as a
person of action who, personally and professionally, traveled
against rather that with the current. Thus, in 1936, as political
anxieties increased in Western Europe, Prokofiev escaped back to
Russia. Though at first pampered by the totalitarian regime,
Prokofiev soon suffered official correction and censorship. He
wrote and revised his late ballets and operas to appease his
bureaucratic overseers but, more often than not, his labors came to
naught. Following his official condemnation in 1948, many of his
compositions were withdrawn from performance. Physical illness and
mental exhaustion characterized his last years. Housebound, he
journeyed inward, creating a series of works on the theme of youth
whose music sounds despondently optimistic. The reasons for
Prokofiev's return to Russia and the specifics of his dealings with
the Stalinist regime have long been mysterious. Owing to their
sensitive political and personal nature, over half of the Prokofiev
documents at the Russian State Archive have been sealed since their
deposit there in 1955, two years after Prokofiev's premature death.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union did not lead to the
rescinding of this prohibition. Author Simon Morrison is the first
scholar, non-Russian or Russian, to receive the privilege to study
them. Alongside wholly or partly unknown score materials, Morrison
has studied Prokofiev's never-seen journals and diaries, the
original, unexpurgated versions of his official speeches, and the
bulk of his correspondence. This new information makes possible for
the first time an accurate study of the tragic second phase of
Prokofiev's career. Moving chronologically, Morrison alternates
biographical details with discussions of Prokofiev's major works,
furnishing dramatic new insights into Prokofiev's engagement with
the Stalinist regime and the consequences that it had for his
family and his health.
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