You also published selected letters of Prokofiev in 1998. Give us an overview of his letters. What do Prokofiev's correspondence tell us about him and his life?

Prokofiev was a brilliant man of letters, with impressive linguistic skill and literary talent. He knew several languages very well -- besides native Russian, fluent French, German and English, as well as Italian and Spanish. He wrote some short stories and reviews, and even said once that he could have made a good music critic. In working on the biography, his letters were an indispensable source for me, but of course I was only able to use small excerpts from them there. So I had always believed that his letters should be published in a separate volume -- or volumes. The problem was choosing which letters to include, since he wrote so many. At the State University of New York at Albany, where I taught in the Slavic Dept. 1980-1996, we had a graduate program in translation, so I was able to enlist some of the graduate students in helping me to translate what seemed to me the most significant of the letters.

What the letters show us is for one thing how much Prokofiev travelled. The letters were written from all over the world. Also they show how much he loved to write -- many letters include small verses and jokes. One of his most interesting correspondences was with his childhood friend Eleonora Damskaya, a harpist with whom he studied at the St.Petersburg Conservatory. They had a very playful, slightly flirtatious relationship and wrote many letters especially in years just before and after World War I. These letters for many years were not known, since their content was judged too politically sensitive for publication in Soviet Russia -- Prokofiev makes quite clear here how little he understood the political and ideological situation around the time of the 1917 Revolutions. He even writes mocking poems about the Bolshevik leaders. When I was in Moscow in 1992, the staff of the Glinka Museum very kindly allowed me to see these letters, and to use them in my collection. Actually, two members of the the staff of the Glinka Museum had prepared for publication a collection of Prokofiev's letters (in Russian), but they were refused permission to publish it because of ideological objections.

Other letters show how extensive Prokofiev's contacts were with the leading musical and cultural figures of his day -- Sergei Eisenstein, Meyerhold, Diaghilev, Stravinsky. And of course his huge correspondence with Miaskovsky is an indispensable resource on his musical and personal life.

Another interesting tale that emerges from his letters with Eleonora Damsakaya is the tale of the Schroeder grand piano Prokofiev won for winning the Rubinstein prize when he graduated form the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1914. Tell us about the piano and whatever became of it.

When Prokofiev left Russia in 1918, of course he had to leave the piano behind, along with other belongings and papers, which were later apparently destroyed when the apartment he had lived in was confiscated by the Bolshevik government. So the piano apparently perished, another victim of the Bolshevik Revolution. This fact rather soured Prokofiev's relationship with Damskaya, because he seemed to hold her (rather unfairly) responsible.

In the book you translated and published only Prokofiev's side of correspondences. Why didn't you also publish the letters to Prokofiev from his friends, colleagues and family members?

I decided not to include in my collection the letters to Prokofiev from his friends, colleagues and family members because the volume would have been simply too large. I felt it was important to provide a sample of his side of the correspondence. But certainly more could be done with Prokofiev's letters -- my volume serves as an introduction.

One characterization of Prokofiev's letters that comes from your book is that he very rarely talks about his own music. He mentions facts and events surrounding the writing or playing of his music, but very little about the music itself. Why do you think he avoided writing about his music?

It's true that Prokofiev writes relatively little of his own music in his letters. He never did especially enjoy talking technically about his compositions and composition practice. This seemed to bore him. At the same time, he can be a very astute critic of what he was hearing, for example in Paris in the 1920s, which he describes in letters to Miaskovsky and Asafiev. Even to them, however, the content is not extensively technical or analytical. I think he wanted to leave that to the musicologists. And he was much more intuitive than intellectual as an artist, I think, something that sets him apart, for example, from Stravinsky.

Another thing that comes from his letters is that he seemed to keep his friends compartmentalized. For example, there is very little mention of Lina in the letters. Why do you think this is?

It's also true there is little mention of Lina in the letters. This reflects I think that he tended to be a very private person where personal life was concerned, and also probably the not always peaceful or happy nature of his relationship with Lina. They were both strong-willed and demanding people, and they always seemed to need to spend a great deal of time apart from each other. By the mid-1930s, there was clearly a great deal of tension in their marriage. But Prokofiev was never one to burden friends with his own personal problems, anyway, as we can see from his oddly laconic reaction to his father's death in a letter to Miaskovsky.

Most of the raw material for 'Selected Letters' was gathered from the Glinka Museum in St. Petersburg. A trove of letters also exist at the Prokofiev Archive in London. I understand some of these have not yet been translated into English. Did you use any material from the London Archive?

I did not use any material from the letters now housed in the London Prokofiev Archive of the Serge Prokofiev Association. Since there was so much available that was not yet available in English, I decided to focus on the material from Soviet sources -- also I used the collection of the Music Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which has the very valuable correspondence between Koussevitsky and Prokofiev. In the future I would like to translate the letters in the London Collection, as well as other material in the very extensive Prokofiev holdings in the Glinka Museum and in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art. Unfortunately, there is only so much time in life...

Oleg Prokofiev found a treasure trove of additional Prokofiev manuscripts after Lina's death in 1989, including the Soviet Diary that was published in 1991. In 1959 French Prokofiev biographer Claude Samuel made a similar discovery of hitherto unknown documents in a trunk in the cellar of Boosey & Hawkes in Paris. I just learned recently that this material was auctioned to the public. Do you think any additional sources of Prokofiev documents might still be found?

We know that there is material in the State Archive of Literature and Art that is to be unsealed in 2003, the 50th anniversary of Prokofiev's death, including some diaries from the 1930s and later. Oleg had examined much of this material before he died and told me it contained no startling revelations, but we'll have to wait and see.

How about recordings? Prokofiev made several radio broadcasts of his music in the Soviet Union? To you knowledge, were recordings ever made of these broadcasts?

I don't know if recordings were made of the broadcasts Prokofiev made in the USSR, but it is certainly possible -- although the state of archival management in the USSR and Russia today is quite chaotic, so it might be very hard to find them. There is film footage of Prokofiev playing on his piano at Nikolina Gora around the time he was writing Cinderella that has been included in several documentary films.

Turning to Prokofiev's music now, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary commemorating his death, how do you think the public's view of his music has changed since he died? You talk about this to some extent in the new Afterword to your biography. In particular you mention that over the last fifteen years, largely thanks to the dedication of Valery Gergiev, Prokofiev's operas are moving "from the fringes to the core" of the operatic repertoire. Is it just his operas that are enjoying a renaissance of sorts?

I think that Prokofiev's operas, which were such a major part of his output, and meant so much to him creatively and personally, are the part of his legacy that were the most deserving of the sort of "rediscovery" that they have been receiving at opera companies all over the world in the last few years. The new production of War and Peace at the Metropolitan Opera has generated an extraordinary amount of interest in the later music written after his return to the USSR. This gratifies me because for a while, "politically correct" critics were dismissing this music as compromised and second-rate, when in fact it contains just as much that is innovative and absolutely original. The mastery of theatrical forms demonstrated in War and Peace (using dance, chorus, ensembles) is remarkable, especially when combined with the penetrating bittersweet lyricism of the music given to Natasha and Andrei. This opera, along with Semyon Kotko and Betrothal in a Monastery, shows how Prokofiev was able to take opera down a completely different path than his contemporaries. Finally the circumstances that have kept western audiences from seeing and hearing this music have changed.

But it is not only the operas. Here in Boston next season, the Boston Symphony is planning to perform the music from The Buffoon, another wildly inventive score that is not nearly as well-known as it deserves to be. And the cycle of piano sonatas, one of the greatest cycles ever composed, has been performed and recorded with increasingly frequency by soloists in New York and elsewhere. The fact is that Prokofiev was amazingly prolific, even under the very trying conditions of his later years. And even under the constraints of the Soviet system, his music never lost its qualities of adventure and innovation and modernism.

What about changes in acceptance of other non-operatic works? At Prokofiev.org we've noticed several movements afoot, at least amongst seasoned Prokofiev aficionados -- many now regard the Sixth Symphony rather than the Fifth as the pinnacle of his symphonies, the Second Piano Concerto has eclipsed the Third in popularity, and there's enormous interest in several of his cantatas that have barely seen the light of day, notably Seven, They are Seven, the Ballade of an Unknown Boy, and the October Cantata. What have you observed from your unique perch with the major orchestras and opera companies on the East Coast of the US?

For me, too, the Second Piano Concerto is more interesting than the Third -- although the Fourth and Fifth are also winning more admirers. When there is so much great music in the Prokofiev canon, it is a pity for orchestras only to repeat incessantly the 'Classical' Symphony and the Fifth Symphony and the Third Piano Concerto and Lt. Kije and Romeo and Juliet -- no matter how wonderful they are. I have been myself rediscovering the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, both of them works of such apparent simplicity and yet with so much feeling and grief.

I am sure that as time passes, more and more of Prokofiev's music will enter the mainstream, for audiences usually find it very congenial, and musicians love to play it.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that in addition to the two books you've written on Prokofiev, you've also written a biography of ballet impresario Sol Hurok. Are there any other books we missed? What are you working on now?

As for my own future plans as a writer, I have several projects in the works. These days I am writing program notes and essays for many different orchestras and opera companies, including the Boston Symphony, The Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Houston Grand Opera and Santa Fe Opera. I am planning eventually to put together a book of my writings on Russian music and musicians, including program notes, interviews with musicians and composers, radio pieces, and articles I have written about musical life in the USSR.

I also give pre-concert lectures for The Boston Symphony, and lectures for the Metropolitan Opera Guild in New York. Last month I organized a special symposium on War and Peace at the Met Opera Guild, and we had 350 people show up, with dozens more waiting in the hall outside trying to get in! I spoke about the music and history of the opera, and I invited Marian Burleigh-Motley, who lectures on Russian art, to talk about the image of Napoleon in Russian art of the early nineteenth century. We were also joined by Prof. Richard Wortman of Columbia University who spoke about Napoleon's role in Russian history. That so many people were so interested only proves that there is a great hunger for deeper examination of the roots of Prokofiev's art. I also appear from time to time on the Chevron-Texaco Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, usually talking about Slavic opera.

Besides my two books on Prokofiev, I also wrote a biography of Russian-American impresario Sol Hurok (Viking 1994, Penguin 1995), who was instrumental in introducing American audiences to Russian dancers and musicians beginning back in the 1920s and all through the Cold War period. Like Prokofiev, Hurok had strong contacts in Hollywood, with movie people. This is the focus of my ongoing book project: The Russians in Hollywood. It will be a cultural history of the Russian contribution to the American cinema, considering both the many emigres who worked in the film industry (including Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitri Tiomkin, George Balanchine, Vernon Duke/Vladimir Dukelsky) and the representation of Russia and the USSR in American movies, a major preoccupation of the Cold War years. Music will be an important part of this book, since so many Russian composers and musicians participated in the Hollywood scene -- and since Stravinsky and Rachamaninoff and others ending up living in Los Angeles.

I'm also branching out into research on Czech cinema and film music. Czech culture has been a strong interest of mine since the early 1970s, when as a graduate student at UC-Berkeley I was able to spend two summers in Prague studying Czech. Last summer I spent more time in Prague (of course a wonderful musical city) and plan to return next fall.

But I have to admit that my creative relationship with Prokofiev's life and music is a very special one that cannot be duplicated. While I was working on the Prokofiev biography, I used to attend a seminar of biographers at New York University, and we all agreed that biographers are lucky to find one or two subjects in a lifetime with which they can really "connect"--in that way the craft of biography is a bit like marriage, there's only time for one or two in a lifetime... So I feel incredibly fortunate that for whatever reasons I was blessed with this special relationship with Prokofiev, that we "found each other" across time. As I wrote in the foreword to the reissued edition of my biography, "In bringing Prokofiev's remarkable story to life, I have also immeasurably enriched my own."

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[You can contact Harlow Robinson via email at: h.robinson@neu.edu.]