Last year, Sviatoslav Prokofiev celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary. Born in Paris in 1924, Sviatoslav was the first son of proud parents Sergei and Lina. Sviatoslav's brother Oleg was born a few years later in December of 1928. The Prokofiev family grew up first in Paris in the 1920s and 30s, and then in the Soviet Union after the family returned in 1936. The years in the Soviet Union started out well enough, but quickly deteriorated with the onset of World War II.

In 1941, his father moved out of the family apartment in Moscow to live with Mira Mendelsohn. Sviatoslav, his brother Oleg, and Lina spent the war in Moscow living under arduous conditions. He graduated from the Architectural Institute in Moscow in 1949. He first met his wife, who is now a doctor, in 1947. They were married in 1949. Sviatoslav spent most of his life in Moscow working as an architect, but moved to Paris with his wife in 1992. He has a son Serge, who has a wife and two daughters, who themselves moved to Paris in 1990. Much as their mother Lina did before she died, Sviatoslav and Serge have worked tirelessly to carry on the memory of Prokofiev and his music.

In this exclusive interview, Sviatoslav tells us about growing up in Paris as a boy, as well as the difficulty of moving to Moscow, and the dark days of World War II. He reveals fascinating details of Prokofiev as a father, as well as a composer and pianist. In addition, he paints a vivid portrait of his little known mother Lina Llubera and describes in tragic detail the events leading up to and after the arrest and exile of Lina after the war. She eventually spent eight years in labor camps serving her sentence.

Prokofiev.org: In polls of classical music listeners, Prokofiev is regularly selected among the top ten favorite composers of all time. In fact, about 20 years ago in my hometown here in the United States, listeners picked your father first, above even Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and all the others! This sentiment has been expressed by many all around the world. It is an extraordinary testament to the greatness and timelessness of your father's music. Why do you think his music has such universal appeal?

Sviatoslav Prokofiev: Prokofiev is my favorite composer too! His music is a synthesis of a new melodic language and contemporary rhythms.

Having lived in both the Soviet Union and in the West, can you tell us the difference between how your father's music was viewed in the Soviet Union and in the West?

In the Soviet Union Prokofiev was viewed firstly as a national composer. In the West, as an outstanding contemporary composer.

How would you assess your father's music versus the other greats of the 20th Century?

My father's music is much nearer to me than the music of the other greats of the 20th century. So I put it in first place.

What was it like growing up in Paris in the 1920s and 30s?

My impressions are of course those of a child. I was born in Paris in 1924. Anyhow I remember my childhood as quite a happy one. From 1930 we lived in a nice apartment in a quite bourgeois district of Paris. With my brother Oleg we had a big children's room where we played and slept. I often heard my father at the piano -- composing or preparing himself for a concert and sometimes my mother singing. All this made a very nice domestic background which I remembered all my life with great nostalgia and love. I went to a good private half boarding-school, Ecole Tannenberg, where I had many friends, some of whom I met now again after 60 years!

I enjoyed very much going with the entire family to the south of France at the seashore for summer vacations, very often going there by car -- my father adored driving. He had first a Ballo, and then a Chevrolet. During vacations we had the opportunity to spend much more time together with our parents -- resting, walking, swimming and having meals together with my father who always told us about interesting things. I suppose that the memory of these happy days that I lived then in France was decisive for my choice of living in France now.

You moved apartments almost yearly, sometimes even staying in hotels. How difficult was that on you and the family?

Of course it created difficulties, especially for my parents, but I do not remember details except about one or two of those apartments and particularly the gardens when we lived in houses out of town. There occured my first unforgettable contacts with nature, helped by my father, who showed me flowers, birds and funny insects. Though I was still very young we sometimes had curious conversations which remained in the family. Once when we were walking with my father in a park our path diverged and suddenly we began to walk in parallel, and I exclaimed: "Look, father: everyone goes by his own way - you have your way and I have my way!"

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

As a child I wanted to be an engineer and even told my father that it would be better to create a new machine that could reach the Moon than to compose a new symphony. Now I am ashamed of my words and I am of the opposite opinion! Later, when it was discovered that I could draw, I was admitted into the Architectural Institute of Moscow and I do not regret it now, because I had an opportunity to study the basics of fine art and art history, and fell in love with them.

There is a picture of you at age 5 with Lina, Sergei and Stravinsky taken at the magnificent Chateau de la Fléchère. Do you remember Stravinsky? What was he like? What did your father think of him?

Yes. I remember the day and the photo you mentioned when we lived at the medieval Chateau de la Fléchère the summer of 1929. In the morning I heard grown-ups constantly repeating the name of Stravinsky. I was very interested and asked my father, "What is Stravinsky?". When at last Stravinsky came, my father repeated my question to our guest. Stravinsky laughed and came to see me saying: "Here, look, this is Stravinsky, that's me, do you see me?" Everybody was delighted.

I met Stravinsky for the last time when he came to Moscow in the autumn of 1962. After a concert, my mother and I accompanied Stravinsky and his wife to the hotel that was situated next to the concert hall. I walked next to him. He suddenly put his arm on my shoulder and told me in Russian: "You know we were great friends with your father!" The relationship between Stravinsky and Prokofiev was quite friendly in the twenties. My father esteemed very much Stravinsky, who was nine years older. He showed him his works, asked his advice and vice versa, and listened with great interest to his music. Diaghilev called them "my two sons - Igor and Sergei." But his two sons soon became rivals and their relations became more complicated, especialy after the death of Diaghilev. Stravinsky criticized some works of Prokofiev, my father did not like the "neoclassical" period of Stravinsky.

At the time, your father was at the peak of his popularity in the West, in great demand both as a pianist and composer. Did you attend any of his concerts? What were they like?

I would like to recall three of my father's concerts that I attended. The first one was in Monte Carlo. At that time I lived with my grandmother (Lina's mother) not far away from Cannes. My parents decided to take me to father's concert for the first time. All of the grown-ups were nervous -- they were afraid that during the concert, out of silence, I would suddenly yell: "Daddy!" But everything went fine. I was amazed. Nevertheless, it was very seldom that I was taken to concerts later on.

Another memorable performance of my father took place in Moscow in 1939, in the school that I attended then. A concert was organized for children to celebrate some holiday, with many performers, including my father, participating. I was very nervous, I wondered how other students would react to that. For some reason, I was nicknamed "American" (meaning "a foreigner", that is). Father, smiling and elegant, came out onto the stage, quickly played several simple pieces, finished with a March from The Love for Three Oranges and, when leaving, even waved his hand out of best intentions. Everybody applauded. For some reason, I felt very uncomfortable in this environment. Later on I got a second nickname - "composer!"

At the last concert, Father performed as a conductor of his just-finished Fifth Symphony. It was at the end of the war - January 1945, another victory of the Soviet Army over the German Army was celebrated, in honor of which a salute by artillery and fireworks was given in Moscow. Coincidentally, the artillery started when Prokofiev was already on the stage and was standing in a solemn posture behind the conductor's stand. He waited till the thundering salute was over, and then started the performing of his Fifth Symphony that was in some way related to the war. The success was tremendous. It was the last public performance of my father. Unfortunately, our relations were not yet re-established since he had left home in 1941 and we did not meet that evening.

How did your father prepare for a concert?

Since I was almost always away at school in the afternoon, I did not have a complete picture of how my father prepared for his concerts. As a rule, he worked during the first half of the day. I remember him "polishing up" the difficult parts of a program before the concert, repeating some passages many times over.

I can still hear him playing the little-known Suite of Waltzes by Schubert, especially the recurring introduction theme; the Second Sonata for Piano - one of my favorites; the Fourth Sonata for Piano with its nostalgic Andante; the brilliant Third Concerto for Piano, which he recorded on disk in London in 1932 as performed by himself.

Except for some of his concert tours in America, I believe your father played his own music exclusively in his recitals. How would you rate him as a composer-pianist during his time versus others such as Rachmaninov?

Surely, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov are very different, one could even say antithetical composers. What they probably have in common is that they are both composer-pianists, who, as a rule, play their pieces very differently from professional pianists, even the great ones. Prokofiev generally played his pieces promoting them all over the world. In his own recordings he showed everybody how Prokofiev's music should be played. I am still astonished that lately the famous pianists started to slow down the tempo of the slow parts of Prokofiev's piano sonatas and concertos so much! By doing that his optimistic and life-asserting music is simply falling apart. Listen, for example, how the slow parts of the Third Concerto for Piano are played, and compare it to the composer's own performance -- especially since it exists!

It is also well-known that he was a tireless worker while composing -- meticulous and fastidious, sometimes to the detriment of his own health. Tell us your memories of how he composed his music.

It's hard for me to say how my father composed his music, but I can confirm that he did it systematically, selflessly and even pedantically. He began working in the morning. Since I left early for school, he often left notes asking me to wake him up. He always slept in the afternoon after lunch. He even had a special electric machine that buzzed monotonously, helping him to fall asleep.

He usually reserved the second half of the day for easier things -- for example, for corrections or answering letters, which he had a lot of. He always replied to the point, interestingly and wittily. To be energetic and to help his thinking, father always took daily walks; long ones when he lived in the countryside, and along a certain route when in the city, sometimes checking the speed by his watch.

In his pocket was always a notebook, within which he would jot down whatever ideas came to his head for future use, even those having nothing do to with his compositions.

In his later years when father was seriously ill, as he lay in the hospital bed, he would write down ideas that came to him on scraps of paper, which caused conflicts with his doctors, who had forbidden him from working. Father replied, "All the same, I think that you cannot forbid me from doing this. If I don't write down the ideas, I expend more strength and energy trying not to forget them."

What was he like as a father during those years? How do you best remember him?

Most often I remember my Dad as I knew him as a kid. He was a very caring, kind, but strict and demanding father, especially when we kids were too noisy when he worked. Sometimes father participated in our games. When grandmother gave me an electric toy train with lots of railroad tracks, father enthusiastically advised me how to place the rails in my room (for example, under the bed!) and which wagons to hitch, and later he bought me another locomotive. Father used to take me with him on walks (my brother was yet too young) during which he little by little was educating me. I clearly remember an unforgettable evening in Saint-Maxime, in the South of France, when father and I went for a walk and he named the stars and constellations. In his youth he was fond of astronomy and even had a telescope!

Receiving a lot of correspondence from all over the world, he put the stamps of different countries away into a round metallic box and then gradually gave them to me as encouragement. He advised me how to place them in an album, and together we looked up the country and its capital on a big world map that he had hung on a wall in the children's room. This instilled in me a love of history, geography and traveling. Besides playing chess, he liked to play the "sea battle" (morskoi boi) with us, while making the rules more and more complicated.

In summer our contact was much closer. Father used to rent a villa in the south of France on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean for all of our vacations. Especially memorable was Jacques Sadoul's villa "Les pins parasols" with a giant umbrellate pine in front of the house and a wonderful panorama of the sea and the surrounding mountains. We used to walk together more frequently then, and the whole family went to the beach to swim almost every day. Dad was diligently showing me how to swim on my back, and I was proud of swimming better. And Mother swam a very long distance away!

Once, in 1929, in Savoy near Switzerland father rented for the summer a real mediaeval castle with towers and thick walls - Chateau de la Fléchère. It is there that Stravinsky who vacationed nearby came to visit us while we paid visits in reply and also went to see Koussevitsky, who also lived nearby.

While being fascinated by Christian Science, father decided to get down to my religious education and started to take me on Sundays to Sunday School at the Church of Christian Science in Paris that he was attending in the twenties and thirties. We used to walk there from home on foot or sometimes drive in father's Chevrolet. The church looked quite secular -- it was a kind of a lecture hall in which sermons for adults were given and hymns sung in chorus. Father harshly criticized the music of the hymns and thought of composing them himself but never realized this idea. The children were assembled separately. We were sitting at a big table and the meaning of the day's subject was popularly explained to us. In addition, an assignment for the next Sunday was given -- to read an excerpt from the Bible, the New Testament or the book of the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, "Science and Health". While we were returning father would ask me questions or explain the obscure or would keep silent, immersed in his own thoughts.

I remember well father in the last years of his life, in the 1950s when I was visiting him in his dacha near Moscow. He was already a completely different man, sort of resigned, with a sad look. One can clearly see how he has changed in the photo of father I took in Nikolina Gora in the fall of 1952. This photo turned out to be his last one. It is painful for me to look at it.

Did your father ever teach you and Oleg to play the piano?

Father did not teach us to play the piano. There was no idyllic scene "The great composer teaches his children." I must say that although he had a lot of different talents, he was no teacher. It became evident later when he was offered a job teaching at the Moscow Conservatory -- nothing came out of it. As for Oleg and me, a music teacher (solfeggio and piano), was hired who tutored us while he was away. Mme Alard was calm and patient, but everything was in vain. We were typical boys who always said "Music, again!" Once father asked us: "Maybe you do not want to study?" We answered in the affirmative and that was the end of it. Father said: "Good, it will be better for all of us, and you would not be disturbing me." I still regret that there was no persistence on his part on this issue. Later, when I was about seventeen, I studied to play the flute, Oleg independently tried to play the piano, and later, in England, the flute, too!

How about chess? You must have learned the game at an early age. Did you play often with your father?

Father taught us to play chess, but rarely played with us. The (ability) gap was too big. In his cabinet he always had on his piano a chessboard with pieces placed on it. He liked to analyze games of masters, and solve chess problems organizing short breaks from work for himself. He also liked to play chess by correspondence with strong players.

In his student years, while studying at the conservatory, Prokofiev frequented the Chess Club in St. Petersburg, participated in chess tournaments, discussed and recorded games. We have kept a book by World Champion Raúl Capablanca with a dedicatory inscription to father.