Warner is releasing a 36-CD box set, Sergei Prokofiev. Tea Collector’s Editionon the occasion of the 70e anniversary of the composer’s death. As surprising as it may seem, this is the first major anthology devoted to Prokofiev.
Death definitely does not smile on Sergei Prokofiev. We are on March 5, 1953 in Moscow, where Prokofiev, one of the great composers of the XXe century, died in the evening of a cerebral hemorrhage. To make matters worse, in the moments that followed and a stone’s throw away, the “little father of the people”, Joseph Stalin, also passed away. Suffice to say that the death of Prokofiev passes very largely in the background, even unnoticed. In the USSR, how then to mourn the loss of the composer, since all the pain must be dedicated to the loss of the great leader of the people? It will take several days to Pravda to announce the news and therefore, for the West, to hear it. His funeral will bring together a handful of familiars, including Shostakovich.
Posterity has obviously been kinder to Prokofiev than to Stalin, whose crimes even the new leaders of the USSR were quick to denounce, but curiously, the composer’s work has been suspected of complacency with the regime. It is also often considered by “genres”, as if in a vacuum: piano concertos, symphonies, ballets, sonatas…
The lyrical case
A box bringing together Prokofiev’s compositions in all genres of music, no one had thought of it until now, not even Brilliant Classics, which has nevertheless devoted large boxes to composers who are sometimes minors.
To be clear, let’s say that a large part is missing in the Warner box: the lyrical work. There is indeed the admirable War and peace by Rostropovich and The Love of Three Orangeswhich did much for the notoriety of Kent Nagano, but other works like THE player, angel of fire, The engagement at the convent and especially, Semyon Kotko have been in recent decades the prerogative of Valery Gergiev, who recorded them for Philips. The operating box Prokofiev by Gergiev is therefore the perfect complement to this edition.
If we put Semyon Kotko highlight is that this opera by Prokofiev, born in 1891 in the region of Yekaterinoslav, in Ukraine (then attached to the Russian Empire), is set in the German occupation of Ukraine in 1918, a work where the Germans are portrayed as barbarians. Designed in 1938, semyon Kotko was to be a show produced and directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold. But Stalin negotiated with Hitler the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR, signed in August 1939. A victim of the purge, the unfortunate Meyerhold was arrested in June 1939 and then executed. At the creation, in June 1940 in Moscow, Semyon Kotkowas not the topic of the hour and fell into oblivion.
The Love of Three Orangeshere included in Kent Nagano’s excellent version in Lyon, deserves an anecdote, taken from the book Ratings by Claude Gingras. In these memoirs of our musical life, the former critic of The Presswrites: “Prokofiev stayed in Montreal for a week in 1920—specifically from January 24 to January 1er February, according to the dates in the diary he kept — […]. Jean Vallerand told me one day that Prokofiev finished the orchestration of his opera here The Love of Three Orangeswhose world premiere was to take place in Chicago in 1921.” Prokofiev’s diary also notes that in Quebec, his hotel “resembled a castle from the outside” and that he saw there “sleighs for the first time since leaving Russia.
Exodus and return
At the time of this trip, Prokofiev, like Rachmaninov, had left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In the West, other Russians had already gained some ascendancy, notably Stravinsky, the enfant terrible of Paris, associated with the Diaghilev’s ballets (Rite of Spring). Prokofiev’s escape in 1918 was to North America with New York as El Dorado. But the opening of the United States for his music deemed “mechanistic” was clearly mixed, while that of Rachmaninoff was welcomed with open arms, securing his back in 1920 thanks to a lucrative contract with Victor.
After the creation of The Love of Three Oranges in Chicago in 1921 (Chicago also saw the creation of the 3e piano concerto which will begin 20 years later, with the prowess of Dimitri Mitropoulos at the piano and the direction, a dazzling career), Prokofiev returned to Europe. It was in Germany that he composed a good part of angel of firean opera which would not be premiered until after his death, in concert in Paris in 1954, then on stage in Venice in 1955. Prokofiev would draw from it during his lifetime the material for an impressive 3e Symphony, created in Paris in 1929 under the direction of Pierre Monteux. Paris will also see the birth of the ballets The step of steel And the prodigal son.
But the one who has the most success in the French capital remains Stravinsky, and Prokofiev is homesick. The government of the USSR, itself, is interested in the return to the fold of such a talent, celebrated during a tour in 1927 where the Pravda found in him “qualities lacking in the current musical life” of the country. The USSR facilitated his return to the country in 1935-1936.
A box set bringing together Prokofiev’s compositions in all genres of music, no one had thought of it until now, not even Brilliant Classics, which has nevertheless devoted large boxes to composers who are sometimes minors
The air of the homeland will inspire the composer since among his first works of this period, we find the ballet Romeo and Julietthe music of the film Lieutenant Kijefrom which Prokofiev will draw a symphonic suite, and the musical tale Pierre and the Wolf, the most popular of musical literature. This period will hardly last, and Prokofiev will be employed in the composition of historical or patriotic music, which he will do formidably twice with Sergueï Eisenstein at the cinema in Alexander Nevsky And Ivan the Terrible. From the period of the Second World War will then be born masterpieces: the Sonatas for piano notbone 6, 7 And 8 and the 5e Symphonycreated on January 13, 1945 with exceptional success.
Trick and discophilia
Prokofiev’s elevation to the rank of “people’s artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” in 1947 did not serve him in the West, where he would long pass as an artistic “collaborator”, especially in the face of the “resistant”. Shostakovich. In fact, Prokofiev’s objective was to maneuver in order to stay as far away as possible from political things. Moreover, a few months after his title of People’s Artist, in February 1948, Prokofiev had to suffer (like Shostakovich, Khachaturian or Myaskovski) the wrath of the cultural censor Jdanov. A number of scores, especially “Western” ones, were banned, to the great joy of the Secretary General of the Union of Composers, Tikhon Khrennikov. De facto, the last five years of Prokofiev’s life were not flamboyant.
Truly surprising, while “transversal” anthologies covering all genres of music abound for all the great composers, none have been published previously in the case of Prokofiev. Another major interest: a forced deepening. Indeed, even within regularly grouped ensembles, such as symphonies, it can be said that it is mainly the Symphonies nbone 1 And 5 which are played in concert and listened to, just like the Piano concertos nbone 2 And 3where the Piano Sonatas nbone 6, 7 And 8. same for me Alexander Nevskywhich totally eclipses Ivan the TerribleAnd Romeo and Julietwhile Cinderella is equally successful.
The music community and music lovers have therefore been satisfied with a “vital minimum”, and this is the path to rediscovery offered by this set, according to a logic of selection of interpretations that prevails in the other “composers” sets from Warner. . The piano sonatas are shared between Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Nicholas Angelich, Michel Béroff and Nikolaï Luganski. The concertos are played by Gavrilov, Rana, Argerich, Weissenberg, Béroff and Richter. The symphonies, except the 1DAnd 7e, devolved to André Previn (who also directs the ballets), are those of Rostropovitch. But there, Warner has little choice.
Internationality of the box obliges, Pierre and the Wolf is found in many versions depending on the language. Claude Piéplu and Igor Markevitch are assigned to the French version, but German-speakers will savor the association of Romy Schneider and Herbert von Karajan. Warner does not hesitate to dub important works, such as the Concertos for violinby Itzhak Perlman then David Oïstrakh, and distributes certain historical documents (3e Concerto for piano by Prokofiev himself, or CD 5 for piano music) in the box set rather than lumping them together at the end.
The box is clever, discophilic (surprise resurrection of extracts from Cinderella recorded by Alain Lombard in Strasbourg, following The Love of Three Oranges with Silvestri in Vienna or cello concerto by Starker and Susskind). In short, it is a fine box set which worthily follows on from those published on Berlioz, Debussy or Ravel.
In concert this week