Your father had a large collection of 78rpm records, which the MGB¹ later confiscated. Tell us about your father's record collection. What kind of music did he listen to?

One cannot say that Prokofiev had a very large collection of records -- it fit in two bags that after mother's arrest and the search of our apartment in 1948 MGB officers dragged down the stairs. I'm afraid that there was little that remained of the collection after this kind of treatment. These were old records that were easily broken. The collection mostly consisted of records of my father's music, some of which I was able to salvage with some ingenuity. Among others was music by Stravinsky, Debussy, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Brahms, recordings of Shalyapin etc.

Previously, after our parents left, I loved to put these records on (it was not encouraged because they were afraid I would break them.) But this listening played a decisive role in forming my love for serious music, and most of all, for Prokofiev's music.

There also was light music - foxtrots, tangos etc. that were brought by father together with the magnificent radiogramophone from the United States in 1938. By that time father learned to dance these dances.

February 20, 1948, the night Lina was arrested, must have been one of the worst of your life. Tell us what happened.

Someone called on the phone and told mother that a parcel was brought for her and asked her to come down to take it. She went down... and we did not see her again. Immediately they came up to search our place. They were searching all night long -- and the whole night they were taking down the examination record (for example: mother's golden ring with sapphire was registered as "a ring of yellow metal with a gem".) Strange, but for some reason our paintings (parents' portraits, landscapes, still lives) were not confiscated -- except for one, but in what way! In the middle of the night during the search some woman entered the apartment. All officers stood at attention before her. She slowly went round the apartment and stopped in front of one of the paintings -- a charming oil of a bouquet in white and silvery tones by Natalya Goncharova. The woman removed the painting off the wall and took it with her! It was not registered in the inventory, of course. Among the confiscated things was the Förster piano brought by father from the West. They paid no attention to my explanations that this was my father's piano. They dragged everything they were interested in into two adjacent rooms that were sealed. Later, at the end of summer, all things were taken away. Two rooms were left for Oleg and me. We continued to live there, passing nervously every day by the sealed door.

How did your father react?

Father lived in the dacha (at Nikolina Gora), he did not have a telephone. The next day Oleg and I went to see him by train. It was frosty, there were no cars and we had to walk all 13 kilometers to his dacha. We came and knocked. Mira Mendelson opened the door, her eyes widened and she slammed the door without saying a word. In a while father came out and we went with him along the road telling him about the tragic event. He was shocked and depressed. He probably felt that a part of the blame was his: if he did not leave home, this would probably not have happened.

Were you allowed to see your mother after she was arrested?

No, we were not allowed, though we asked several levels of authority: the information bureau at the Kuznetsky Most, and at the Lefortovo prison. They said that meetings were not allowed before trial. And when the so-called "trial" took place and she was accused of espionage and sentenced to 20 years of hard labor "for treason", it was not allowed so much the more. We were only allowed to write her to the camp in Abez' in the Komi Republic and to send her parcels once a month. We also received replies to our letters.

A meeting was permitted about three years later and Oleg went to the North to see her. And in about three more years Oleg and I went to see mother in Mordovia where she was transferred. By that time, when Stalin was already dead, the attitude of visiting had been liberalized -- all three of us even lived together in a separate room for three days. However, mother returned to Moscow only eight years after her arrest, having received a statement of "rehabilitation for absence of corpus delicti"(!).

I understand you and Oleg tried very hard to secure the release of your mother from the labor camp in Komi. What did your father do to help?

We found an advocate who agreed to help us and wrote lots of papers to various levels of authority. All to no avail. We went to see D.D. Shostakovich as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR -- he was sympathetic and promised to help but was not able to do anything. Father was not able to do anything either, after Zhdanov's 1948 decree he was on the blacklist himself. Many people were arrested, including even the wives of Molotov, Kalinin and other prominent political figures but even their husbands could not do anything -- they were afraid.

What was your relationship with your father like after Lina's arrest?

After my mother's arrest the established relations with father did not change, we were still seeing each other only rarely. I, a 1949 graduate of Architectural Institute, and my wife could not get a job anywhere and father was helping us whenever he could, though his music was almost never performed or published.

Many believe your father expressed his dissatisfaction with what was happening in the then-Soviet Union queitly through his music. On a more open level, many of his great works of the period such as the First Sonata for Violin and Piano and the 7th and 8th Piano Sonatas convey a sense of desolation and great human suffering. And he admitted later he wrote the 5th and 6th Symphonies as an antidote to the suffering -- in celebration of the human spirit. How much was your father affected by the events going on under Stalin's rule and how did he express it?

Father never spoke about his attitude towards what was happening. He observed but did not comment. The same about the content of his work. In my view, his music was self-explanatory. Listen to the Sixth Symphony written in 1947. The heart aches...

Are there any other incidents you can tell us about that help to shed light on how Prokofiev viewed the Soviet Union, or vice-versa?

In 1969 mother got an invitation from the Minister of Culture of France Malraux for the opening of a memorial plaque dedicated to father on the house where we lived in Paris in 1930-36 (5, rue Valentin Hauy.) The USSR Union of Composers, then headed by Khrennikov, had practically denied my mother the trip, having given her a reference (that was necessary for obtaining the exit visa) of a sharply negative nature. Although Khrennikov later assured her that there was nothing that he could do, I am convinced that he, who held such a position in the Soviet party hierarchy, could have, if he had wanted, influenced the concerned organizations to let her take the trip. But party discipline and ideological intoxication turned out to be stronger than elementary decency (at that he liked to publicly say: "Prokofiev is my God!"). Perhaps he was under the pressure of fear on which the whole Soviet system was based. It's a strange coincidence: Khrennikov, on whom mother was still pinning her hopes (with a positive decision she could still come in time for the opening of the plaque, which she awaited), was out of Moscow (or was he?) up till the last moment when he, with a calm conscience of "duty fulfilled", left for Paris for the opening ceremony.

As a result, mother was refused, the stated reason being "inexpediency of her trip" (!) But in Paris everybody was there on the Soviet behalf at the opening of the plaque! One can say everybody they wanted, evidently, their presence was "expedient"! But the hostess of the apartment was not there. Neither were her sons -- nobody was talking about them, as if they never existed at all.

Moreover, when Khrennikov was asked why mother had not come, he, as Nikolai Nabokov testifies, replied that she could not because she was preoccupied with personal problems!

In spite of the difficult years surrounding the war, your mother never seemed to waiver in her love of Sergei and his music. Even after his death, she championed his music, establishing the Sergei Prokofiev Foundation. Tell us how your mother viewed your father and his music.

My mother loved my father's music a lot and was proud of it, she sang his romances at concerts and attended almost all first performances. Prokofiev's every work reminded her about the time and place where it was written as well as all the concomitant events. Mother was a very attractive, beautiful and charming woman, lively and communicative, freely speaking six foreign languages. And father certainly enjoyed going out with her.

Lina's love for Sergei Prokofiev and his music can be judged by her actions -- she founded the Sergei Prokofiev Foundation in London to popularize Prokofiev's works. The Sergei Prokofiev Archive, founded, in turn, by the Foundation, contains Lina's personal documents -- texts of her interviews, numerous sketches and drafts of her memoirs she was working on.

Yes, I understand when she passed away in 1989 she had been planning to publish these memoirs. I understand she had also collected a large number of Prokofiev's papers and correspondence. Are there plans to complete her work or publish any of her materials?

I should remind you that her article "From the Memoirs" (60 pages) was published in Moscow by the publishing house Kompozitor in 1962, and in 1965 after Soviet censoring in the book "Sergei Prokofiev: Articles and Materials" edited by Nestyev and Edelman. Currently the Archive is working with mother's papers. It is premature to talk about their publication.

Before dying, mother asked to be buried alongside S. Prokofiev's mother -- Maria Grigoryevna Prokofieva -- in Meudon near Paris, and we complied.

I also want to add that Maria Grigoryevna gave her blessing to her son's marriage to Lina in 1923 as her signature on the German marriage certificate goes to show.

When did you move back to Paris?

I finally moved to France in 1992. Before that I often visited Oleg and mother in Paris and London.

Eventually, I believe Oleg moved to London and you stayed in Paris. Why did he move to London? Where did your mother live?

In the fall of 1971 during vacations in Sukhumi, Georgia, Oleg's dearly beloved wife Camilla Gray, who in 1970 bore him a daughter Anastasia, died of hepatitis. Oleg and his daughter went to London where Camilla's parents, brothers and sisters lived and where she was buried. Thus Oleg stayed in England and was soon admitted for graduate studies at the University of Leeds.

Our mother Lina Prokofieva came to stay with Oleg in 1974 but she also stayed for long periods of time in Paris, which she loved a lot. Mother restored her Spanish citizenship she had before her marriage to Prokofiev in 1923.

You must have met many great musicians over the years. Who are some of your favorite interpreters of your father's music?

Among the numerous performers of piano music, and those playing Prokofiev's music, my favorite pianist is Sviatoslav Richter. He is the first performer of many of Prokofiev's piano works, and the Piano Sonata No 9 was dedicated to him by my father.

My favorite violinist is David Oistrakh, he is the first performer of the First and Second Sonatas for Violin and Piano, and the First Sonata for Violin and Piano is dedicated to him.

Did you ever meet Richter or Oistrakh? What were your impressions of them?

I often met David Oistrakh but, unfortunately, mostly in the street since we were living in the same building in Moscow, on Chkalov street. I have met with him several times in our apartment when he was coming to play the First Sonata for Violin and Piano for my father to clarify a few passages with the composer. He always seemed to be a tactful and well-mannered man, which was very appealing to me. He, like my father, was a motorist, they even had similar "Fords" that they both brought from the United States in 1938. With regard to the subject of automobiles I am proud of the fact that several times I had a chance to drive Oistrakh in my car for rehearsals to Tchaikovsky Hall.

Richter also lived for some time in this house (on Chkalov street) at his teacher Heinrich Neuhaus' place. He was a man of a totally different type, but not any less charming than Oistrakh. When going to his concerts, my mother and I would always come after the concert to his dressing room to thank and congratulate him on his success. We were allowed to see him even when he did not want to see anybody. Once I drove him, like at other times with Oistrakh, in my car after the concert, and I was insistently asked not to drive too fast because Richter did not like that. But he liked to go for long walks.

In 1954 when I with my wife and my year-old son Seryozha were vacationing during the summer in a dacha in Nikolina Gora, Richter and Nina Dorliak spent a few days there -- I have a photo showing Richter looking curiously at Seryozha, though he was indifferent to children.

Do you stay in touch with your father's old friends like Mstislav Rostropovich?

I consider Mstislav Rostropovich, whom I first met at my father's dacha at the time of composing the Sinfonia-Concertante for Cello and Orchestra to be an unsurpassed, unique interpreter of this work of genius. At that moment Rostropovich greatly impressed me as an untiring storyteller and humorist. Every time I saw him with my father there always was an endless flow of funny jokes, anecdotes, interesting stories about different people. Father was taking an active part in this "action" - they understood each other well - and it encouraged him a lot in that gloomy period of his life. I have photographed them this way.

Later I met Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya several times in Moscow and Paris. And in 1991 Rostropovich invited me with my wife and Oleg to Washington and New York for a jubilee concert to celebrate my father's 100th anniversary. It was an unforgettable trip.

How about your father's longtime close friend Nikolai Miaskovsky? I understand when your father and Lina toured Europe and the United Staes in 1938, Miaskovsky took care of you and Oleg back in Moscow. What are your memories of Miaskovsky?

When in the thirties my parents were leaving for a long time, our grandmother (along mother's line) was taking care of us in Paris. In Moscow it was our good friend Veronika Burtseva whom we called simply Nika who was taking care of us and keeping the household. We practically did not see Miaskovsky but we knew that he was the most important person whom we could address on any difficult problem, financial in particular. I remember him presenting us at holidays with big lavishly illustrated books -- Bram's "Animals' Life" or something on mineralogy. I often saw Miaskovsky later when he visited Father's dacha -- he lived nearby at Professor P.A. Lamm's dacha. I remember him as an amiable and rather reticent man, passionate mushroom picker -- he knew good spots for mushrooms in the neighboring forests. I often met him at symphonic concerts in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory -- he always took the same seat, in the last orchestra rows on the left, he thought that the acoustics were better there. I would always come up to greet him and he would ask me questions about my life.

A number of books about your father have been published in recent years. How do you assess the various books? Which ones are best? What are some of the major errors or misconceptions from these books you'd like to clear up?

The common shortcoming of the latest books about Prokofiev, whether by Robinson, Dorigné or Jaffé, is the unawareness of living and working conditions in the Soviet Union under the guidance of the merciless party machine. It leads to total lack of understanding and, occasionally, unjustified accusations of Prokofiev's "bolshevism" or even support of the regime when speaking about such outstanding works -- satirical and tragic at the same time -- as the Cantatas for the Twentieth and Thirtieth Anniversaries of the October Revolution (Op 74 and 114), Zdravista (Op 85), On Guard for Peace (Op 124), etc.

Besides, the legal side of my father's so-called second marriage, which was simply invalid under the European norms, is portrayed in the wrong way. My parents got married in Germany in 1923 fully complying with the laws of this country, the country they were living in at the moment. In 1936 father, mother and we children as members of the same family entered the USSR where a separate apartment was provided to us by the state. This means that it -- the state -- has recognized my parents' marriage! And all of a sudden this marriage became invalid. There was no talk of a divorce or a divorce itself, which means that there never was a second wife.

How do you hope your father will be remembered?

With regard to your question I recall a radio broadcast I heard in 1992 in Moscow. It was called "Young Mozart and young Prokofiev." Piano works written by both composers since the age of 5 were performed. In those works the bright individuality of both was manifest and, if I may say so, the seeds of future masterpieces or at least their character could be seen.

So I am sure that in future my father will be as loved and revered as much as Mozart is now!