Today is the 119th birthday of composer Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev. Born in 1891 in the farming village of Sontsovka, Ukraine, his love of music came naturally: his mother was a talented pianist in her own right, and Prokofiev would later recall listening to her play Beethoven and Chopin far into the night. Though not considered a prodigy, he displayed talent early on, penning his first compositions at age five (with the assistance of his mother) and writing the music and libretto for an opera when he was ten. In 1904, he became the youngest student ever to be admitted to the most prestigious musical training ground in Russia, the St. Petersburg Conservatory, arriving with a trunkload of musical compositions that caused professor Rimsky-Korsakov to reportedly exclaim, "Here is a pupil after my own heart!" Despite criticisms from professors and fellow students, Prokofiev developed an increasingly original style of composition and performance which, over time, would mark him as one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. He spent time living abroad in Japan, North America, and Europe, returning to his homeland in the mid-1930s and composing some of his greatest works, including the ballet Romeo and Juliet, despite turbulent relations with the Stalist government. Given the cultural repression and the official denouncements of his own modernist work under which Prokofiev toiled during the last years of his life, it was a cruel irony that he died the same day as Stalin: March 5, 1953.
Click here to reserve the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra's performance of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet; the CD also includes an excerpt of Tchaikovsky's version.
No comments:
Post a Comment