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compositions were withdrawn from performance.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 RussianState 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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