Comrade Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev was a composer with an abundance of genius but little luck. In the Soviet Union (he went into exile after the Revolution but returned in 1934) he had to endure a series of criticisms and denunciations for “formalism” delivered by second-rate musicians who were party functionaries. Illness plagued his last nine years, and even his death was unlucky in its timing, for it occurred March 5, 1953, the same day Joseph Stalin died, and his obituary notices around the world were consequently swamped in the news cables.
Victor Seroff subtitles his new biography of Prokofiev “A Soviet Tragedy.” He sees the composer as a kind of musical Danton, a victim of the regime, and with a head, like that of the French revolutionary leader, worth showing to the people. The comparison may be somewhat overdrawn: Prokofiev, after all, did not die upon a scaffold, nor did he openly challenge or defy his opponents. Yet there is no doubt that he was forced to conform in his art and restrict his style.
Whatever the Soviet regime’s effect upon Prokofiev’s art, Mr. Seroff shows convincingly that his life was made miserable by the machinations of the cultural commissars. Not content to anathematize his music as “formalistic” (that vague but sinister adjective which can be applied to any contrived music), they criticized his style of dress (he liked Western tweeds, ties, and doublebreasted jackets), his “bourgeois” past (he had been born into the educated class), and his personal habits (he preferred an electric shaver that had been purchased in the United States to an honest Communist razor).
Most shocking of all was the tragic course of Prokofiev’s family affairs after his freedom to travel abroad was cut off in 1939. Official Soviet biographers have been understandably vague about this aspect of Prokofiev’s life, and though certain details still remain mystifying, Mr. Seroff has probed deeply into the documentary evidence and into the memories of Prokofiev’s acquaintances and come up with a grim but fascinating story.
Prokofiev’s wife, Lina Llubera, who apparently is still alive in Moscow (though Western publishers are unable to find her to pay the royalties due her), was born in Madrid. Her father was Spanish; her mother was born in Russia of Polish-Alsatian descent. To make her background even more complex, her family moved to New York when she was quite young, and it was there that Prokofiev met her after a concert of his in December, 1918. Five years later they were married in a little Bavarian town where Prokofiev had a summer villa.
To the Soviet authorities, Lina obviously was the “wrong” kind of wife for Prokofiev: her foreign origins were suspicious; she had a “Western” background; her loyalty to the regime was open to question. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Prokofiev separated from his wife and their two sons an action forced upon him, Mr. Seroff believes, by the government. In any event, Prokofiev began living with Myra Mendelson, a poet and writer who was a niece of Lazar Kaganovich, a Party stalwart. Mr. Seroff discounts the official Soviet version that Prokofiev married Myra, but it remains a bitter story, especially for Mme. Prokofiev, who eventually was forced to spend nine years in a Siberian labor camp before she was finally released in one of the post-Stalin amnesties
Mr. Seroff’s book is a personal rather than a critical biography: he places the composer’s works in historical perspective without evaluating or comparing individual pieces. Yet the Prokofiev who emerges is one of the supreme creative figures of the twentieth century, not only for his contribution to the musical mainstream, but for his understanding of what was going on all around him. Despite the sustenance he drew from his own country and immediate contemporaries (his teachers included RimskyKorsakoy, Glazunov, Liadov, and Glière), Prokofiev never became a merely Russian composer. Perhaps it was the fact that he had been at home musically in France and, to an extent, America which irritated the Soviet musical authorities; Mr. Seroff cites the case of one Israel Nestyev, who wrote a biography dedicated to proving that Prokofiev became a great composer only after he returned to the Soviet Union.
The current Schwann record catalogue offers a broad view of Prokofiev’s achievement, for it ranges from early piano pieces like the Visions Fugitives to the Symphony No. 7, written in his next-to-last year. Two major recording projects are devoted to a systematic presentation of Prokofiev’s music. One is Erich Leinsdorf’s plan to record all the major orchestral works with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This now encompasses nine releases, among them such notable recordings as Itzhak Perlman’s performance of the Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor (RCA Victor LSC-2962), the SymphonyConcerto for Cello and Orchestra with Samuel Mayes as soloist (LSC2703), and a dramatic reading of the Romeo and Juliet ballet music (LSC2994).
Even more imposing, if only for their point of origin, are the Prokofiev records that are pouring out on
Capitol’s Melodiya/Angel and Melodiya/Seraphim labels. A few years ago Capitol made an exclusive arrangement with Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, the Soviet recording trust, to release in the United States a continuing series of recordings taped in the U.S.S.R. but pressed and packaged in the United States.
A high proportion of these releases are devoted to Prokofiev, for in contrast to the shabby treatment he received during his lifetime, the Soviet authorities today are devoting themselves to nothing less than recording his complete works. Included in the series are such pieces as the ballet Le Pas d’acier, written in Paris in 1925 (and once denounced in a Soviet musical journal as “a counter-revolutionary composition bordering on Fascism”), as well as such patriotic film scores as Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible.
The two most recent Melodiya releases illustrate both Prokofiev the “official" composer and Prokofiev the individualist. On Guard for Peace, an oratorio written in 1950, helped Prokofiev back into official favor after his denunciation for “formalism” in 1948. Scored for mezzosoprano, boy soprano, two speakers, chorus, boys’ choir, and orchestra, it is a heavily bombastic and repetitive work celebrating the Soviet victory over the Nazis. If it is redeemed at all it is by some attractively naïve children’s chorus (Melodiya/Seraphim S-60067).
The other record, in contrast, contains two of Prokofiev’s most readily listenable works, his first symphony (the Classical) and his last (No. 7). The Classical, along with Peter and the Wolf, remains among Prokofiev’s most popular works; the Seventh is a quietly lyrical and personal utterance. It begins beautifully, and although it ultimately descends into a kind of perfunctory charm, has some of the inward detachment and serenity of Mozart’s last works. Both symphonies are ably played by the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky, and the sound is the best I have yet heard on a recording of Soviet origin (Melodiya/Angel SR-40061).
As extensive as the Prokofiev releases have been, a good deal remains to be recorded before the full extent of his output has been spanned. The operas in particular have been neglected. Although Mezhdunarodnay a Kniga has recorded War and Peace complete for distribution at home, Capitol has seen fit to release it in the United States only in “highlight” form (Melodiya/Angel S40053). There is no up-to-date stereo recording of The Love for Three Oranges.
Another prime candidate for recording is Semyon Kotko, a full-length opera almost unknown in this country. Composed in 1938-1939, it is a musical depiction of the 1918 Civil War that has grandeur, drama and atmosphere, and some of Prokofiev’s most masterful vocal writing. A recording imported from Russia circulated here briefly under the auspices of Artia-Parliament in 1962, but nothing has been heard of the opera since. Its total absence from the catalogue suggests that the rehabilitation of Prokofiev still has some way to go, in our own country no less than in Russia.