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Prokofiev's return to the Soviet Union took several years -- from 1933 to
1936 he still considered Paris his home, but he frequently travelled to
Moscow. More importantly, he began to receive commissions for new works
from the Soviet Union. Prokofiev did not become a permanent Moscow resident
until 1936.
This period between Paris and Moscow is marked by a number of new works, the most important of which were the ballet Romeo and Juliet, the Second Violin Concerto and the music for the film Lieutenant Kijé. The latter work was Prokofiev's first Soviet commission. Based on an original story by Yuri Tynyanov, the film was created by Alexander Fienzimmer, with musical scoring by Prokofiev. Prokofiev reworked the film music into the now famous Symphonic Suite (Opus 60). The Second Violin Concerto was written for the French violinist Robert Soetans and received its premiere by Soetans in Madrid on 01-December-1935. It was an immediate success and became even more popular when championed by Jascha Heifetz starting in 1937. The Second Violin Concerto is typical of the three major works in this period. They mark a transition from his 'Toccata' and 'Grotesque' lines into his 'Lyrical' and 'Classical' lines. The 'lyrical' line actually can be found in earlier works such as the First Violin Concerto and many of his songs for voice and piano. The Second Violin Concerto is indeed very rich in it lyricism, yet very simple in rhythm -- in stark contrast to the complex, toccata rhythms of the Fourth and Fifth Piano concertos. Romeo and Juliet was originally commissioned as a ballet work by the Kirov Theater in 1934. However, when Prokofiev proposed Romeo and Juliet as the subject, the Kirov objected ("living people can dance, the dying cannot.") So instead, Prokofiev signed a contract to stage Romeo and Juliet instead with the Bolshoi Ballet Theater. As with other Prokofiev stage productions, the journey from commission to premiere was anything but smooth. Upon seeing the score in the summer of 1935, the Bolshoi declared the work undanceable. The work languished unperformed for several years. It finally received a premiere on 30-December-1938 at the Brno Opera House in Prague. Not one to waste music, Prokofiev did not wait for the Boshoi to stage his work. He crafted two Symphonic Suites and a piano transcription (Opus 75) out of the ballet score in 1936 and 1937 respectively, and a Third Symphonic Suite in 1946. Both the symphonic and piano transcriptions were warmly accepted by the public. The reception of the ballet at Brno in 1938 was equally positive. Only after this success did the Kirov and Bolshoi take notice again. The Kirov eventually staged Romeo and Juliet in 1940 and the Bolshoi in 1946. Lieutenant Kijé also marks the beginning of a period of intense interest by Prokofiev in film music. He scored music for Sergei Eisenstein's epic Alexander Nevsky in 1939, followed shortly by scores for Lermontov (1941), Partisans in the Ukranian Steppes (1942), Tonya (1942), Kotovsky (1942), and Ivan the Terrible (1942-5). Prokofiev even undertook a special trip to Hollywood during his last tour of the United States in 1938. He closely studied the techniques of filmmakers and composers in the Hollywood studios, with an eye towards taking the knowledge back with him to the Soviet Union. Alexander Nevsky afforded Prokofiev the opportunity to apply what he had learned in Hollywood. The collaboration between Eisenstein and Prokofiev was extraordinary in its synchronicity. Prokofiev later scored a Cantata from the film music in Opus 78. To this day, it remains a landmark work in the choral repetoire.
Prokofiev also applied his superb scoring skills to the theatrical stage as
well. He wrote music for several plays including Egyptian Nights
(1934), Boris Godunov (1936),
Eugene Onegin (1936), and
Hamlet (1937). In the same
genre and at the same time, Prokofiev was asked by the Central Childern's
Theater to write a new musical symphony just for children. The intent was
to cultivate 'musical tastes in children from the first years of school.'
Intrigued by the invitation, Prokofiev set about the project with usual
aplomb and completed Peter and the Wolf
in just four day's time. The debut on 02-May-1936 was, in the composer's words, inauspicious at best:
"(attendance) was rather poor and failed to attract much attention."
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By this time, all of Prokofiev's commissions were coming from within the
Soviet Union. He had moved permanently to his Moscow apartment and in May
of 1936 Lina arrived with Oleg and Sviatoslav. The return to Moscow now
completed, Soviet officials no longer afforded Prokofiev special treatment.
Whereas in previous years they had bent over backwards to accommodate his
preference for living in the West, now they turned a cold shoulder. The
Soviet Union had endured extraordinary depravity in its nascent years,
bloodied by World War I, invaded by the Western allies and Japan in 1918 in
an oft-forgotten intervention , further ravaged by a long and brutal Civil
War, followed by years of generally disastrous economic experiments, and a
period of horrific repression by Stalin in the 1930's. Life was harsh by most
measures. Millions of Soviets had died either at the hands of their own
government or from starvation. Although rapid industrialization during the
Five Year Plans of 1928-1937 improved the situation somewhat, the standard
of living even in Moscow was a far cry from the comforts of burgeoise
Paris. However harsh the conditions and increasingly strict the official
party line, Prokofiev persevered.
The change in the process of composing music was stark. In Europe, a composer's creative vision was tempered only by economic realities. If the public didn't like your music, theater owners would not pay you to write new music. And unless you were supported by rich benefactors, you didn't eat. At its worst, it was a competitive arena and a composer had to temper artistic integrity with an occassional dose of popular music. Fortunately, Paris, London, Chicago and the other centers of music in the West were very advanced in their musical tastes compared to the Soviet Union. For this reason, contemporary music generally flourished. In the Soviet Union, the environment was completely different. From the beginning, the Soviet Union was centrally controlled -- by party leaders in Moscow who dictated everything that was to be created, consumed or conceived. Artistic freedom was non-existent. Creativity was stifled by the whims of appointed party bureaucrats who created the official rules. Changes in Soviet leadership since the October Revolution only worsened the situation for artists and writers. In 1932 Stalin introduced his cultural policy of 'Socialist Realism.' A year later, the party bureaucrats had distilled this notion into guidelines for composers: The main attention of the Soviet composer must be directed towards the victorious progressive principles of reality, towards all that is heroic, bright and beautiful.This distinguishes the spiritual world of Soviet man and must be embodied in musical images full of beauty and strength. Socialist Realism demands an implacable struggle against folk-negating modernistic directions that are typical of the decay of contemporary bourgeois art, against subservience and servility towards modern burgeois culture.In practice, the results were stifling. New compositions out of step with 'Socialist Realism' were criticized and their composers publically ridiculed. Both Shostakovich and Prokofiev were to suffer far worse privations for stepping outside the boundaries of officially proscribed doctrine. By comparison, though, composers and musicians under the Soviet yoke fared far better than Soviet writers, artists and architects. Initially, Prokofiev at least publically embraced the Soviet ideology. He composed the monumental Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution in 1936-37, and the Zdravitsa (Hail to Stalin) Cantata in 1939. The 20th Anniversary Cantata was rejected as too modernist and never performed during Prokofiev's lifetime. Prokofiev again tried to tow the party line in the summer of 1938 when he began a new opera, which he hoped to compose on a contemporary Soviet theme. The work, Semyon Kotko, followed the story of a young hero during the occupation of Ukraine by the Germans after the revolution. The Germans were the villain of the story -- a wrinkle which unbeknownst to Prokofiev would doom the work to an ugly fate. Prior to 1939, relations between Germany and Russia had rapidly deteriorated. Hitler's rise to power in Germany foreshadowed yet another World War in Europe in two decades. In 1938, Germany annexed the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The Soviets stood ready to defend the Czechs against Hitler's aggression when Chamberlain and the French capitulated at the infamous Munich meeting in September of 1938. Now completely isolated, the Soviets sought security through appeasement. Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression treaty on 23-August-1939, paving the way for Hitler's invasion of Poland a week later. More importantly in its effect on Prokofiev, Germany was suddenly an ally of the Soviet Union. The imminent staging of Semyon Kotko with its portrayal of a brutal German occupation was unfathomable to Stalin. Vsevolod Meyerhold, Prokofiev's longtime friend and the producer of Semyon Kotko, was arrested during the production of the opera and executed. The Germans in the opera were re-cast as unnamed villains. Even such drastic actions did not soothe Stalin's paranoia -- Semyon Kotko was 'removed' from the official repetoire and was not 'politically rehabilitated' until 1970. |
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Even more detrimental to Prokofiev's fortunes, the Soviet Union's
rapprochement with Germany severed ties with France, Great Britain, the
United States, and the rest of the Allies. As a consequence, there was no
longer any need to let Prokofiev travel abroad as an ambassador of
music. And so it was decreed. Prokofiev no longer was allowed to tour
outside the Soviet Union. The heavy-handedness would soon have tragic
consequences on Prokofiev's family life. Lina was Spanish by birth -- a
dangerous fact in Stalin's paranoid state. Foreigners were mistrusted.
Ethnic minorities outside Russia proper suffered far worse. At least for
now Lina was safe from deportation, starvation or execution -- the
preferred methods for dealing with non-Russians.
In this increasingly dangerous environment, Prokofiev continued to compose. Even the outbreak of the Second World War did not diminish his productivity. In fact, Prokofiev became more prolific -- perhaps an indication of his withdrawal from politics and daily hardships into his music. In 1939, he worked simultaneously on a huge number of works: three Piano Sonatas (Nos. 6, 7 and 8), the Sonata for Violin and Piano in F minor, Semyon Kotko, and several patriotic works.
Prokofiev began writing his last complete opera, The
Duenna (Betrothal in a Monastery), in 1940. Its staging was delayed by the outbreak of war. When
it finally premiered after the War in 1946, it was roundly praised within
the Soviet Union. The Duenna was also important because it marked the
beginning of Prokofiev's relationship with the poet Mira Mendelssohn. Mira
had met Prokofiev in 1938, when she was but twenty-three years old.
Mira collaborated with Prokofiev on the Duenna and wrote many of
the verses. She later helped write the lyrics for his next opera,
War and Peace, and several other minor works.
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