Meet the Phil 2005/06 |
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 SESSION C - Wednesday 7 December, 11.30am-1pm , Studio 7, New Broadcasting House
Cinderella Ballet Suite - Prokofiev (1891-1953)
The composition of Cinderella was a direct result of the successful Russian premiere of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet - a success which had been in doubt right up to the last moment. The production was beset with difficulties, and as late as a fortnight before the opening the dancers and members of the orchestra were hoping for a cancellation. Despite the tense and often unhappy atmosphere of the rehearsals, Romeo and Juliet was a triumph.
The great Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova, who was to be the first Cinderella (and had been Prokofiev's original Juliet) recalls in her memoirs a cold winter evening in 1940:
'I lived partly in Leningrad and partly in Moscow . Not long after the opening of Romeo and Juliet, Radin the director of the Kirov Theatre, wishing to cement our ballet's good relations with Prokofiev, asked him to write something else for us. One evening he brought Prokofiev with him to my room in the Moskva Hotel. They asked me what part I would like to dance.
'The Snow Maiden' I replied.
Oh, but Rimsky Korsakov has written such a splendid Snow Maiden that I wouldn't dare to tackle that theme," said Prokofiev. 'But perhaps we could try Cinderella?' He told us why he had not believed in ballet before Romeo and Juliet , why he had not believed that ballet art could give dull expression to musical and literary images. But now his attitude had changed completely and he wanted to write rich, full-blooded music for a new ballet.'
On 22 June 1941 Prokofiev was working on the piano score of the second act in the countryside near Moscow when he heard of the Nazi invasion of Russia . The ballet was laid aside for nearly two years during which, despite the upheavals caused by his evacuation and separation from his wife and children, Prokofiev concentrated on the composition of his opera War and Peace.
At the end of 1943 Prokofiev was back in Moscow with the completed piano score of Cinderella and by the summer of 1944 the orchestral score was ready. Although commissioned by the Kirov , it was the Bolshoi ballet which gave the first performance. Prokofiev was too unwell to supervise any of the rehearsals (a serious fall in January 1945 had caused a brain concussion that was to affect his health for the rest of his life, but there seem to have been none of the problems which had jeopardised Romeo and Juliet.
Cinderella is sometimes viewed as 'lightweight Prokofiev'; a charming and tuneful fairy-tale ballet. However it does have a dark side, with ominous waltzes and midnight clocks striking. Prokofiev's score is dissonant and full of irony and sarcasm. The music moves in gusts and sweeps, emphasising the uncertainty of the romance between Cinderella and the Prince.
'Although the fairy-tale of Cinderella is found among many people, I wanted to take it up as a genuine Russian fairy-story.' Prokofiev
The second orchestral suite consists of 6 movements: Cinderella's dreams, Dancing lesson and gavotte, Spring fairy and Summer Fairy, Bourée, Cinderella at the palace and Gallop .
About the composer
Sergei Prokofiev, as he writes in his memoirs, "first saw the light of day on Wednesday 23rd April at five in the afternoon." He was born in 1891, the centenary of Mozart's death, in the Ukranian village of Sontsovka . Prokofiev's father, originally from Moscow , was an agricultural engineer, his mother was, in Glière's * words, "a tall woman with magnificent, intelligent eyes... who knew how to create around herself a warm, natural atmosphere." Having lost two daughters she devoted her life to music and spent two months a year in Moscow or St. Petersburg taking piano lessons. Prokofiev began taking piano lesions from his mother when he was three. He wrote his first composition when he was six, The Indian Galop .
After a trip to Moscow at age 8 where he was exposed to The Sleeping Beauty , Faust and Prince Igor , he declared "I want to write an opera." Three or four months later he presented his parents with The Giant , an opera in three acts and six tableaux for solo piano. Prokofiev eventually was tutored by a young Reinhold Glière for whom he developed a great affection, especially after he had accepted Prokofiev's challenge to a duel with pistols. From time to time he also took trips to Moscow to visit Taneyev (a composer and the future director of the Bolshoi Theatre).
By age twelve it was decided that Prokofiev should continue his studies at a Conservatoire. Eventually, in 1904 he was sent to the St. Petersburg Conservatoire so that his mother could be close to him. The Conservatoire at this time was under the direction of Rimsky-Korsakov.
Against the established thinking of the Conservatoire, Prokofiev became a committed anti-Romantic, not liking the music of Chopin and Liszt. In 1914, despite not playing one of the prescribed Classical concertos, he won the Rubenstein Prize for piano performance playing his own composition.
The year of the Russian Revolution, 1917, turned out to be a creative time for Prokofiev producing the Violin Concerto in D major and the Classical Symphony . Prokofiev moved to the United States in 1918 where he gave his first recital on November 11th. In America he was greatly discussed, somewhat admired but little liked being variously described as "the Bolshevik pianist" or "Steel fingers, steel biceps, steel triceps - he is a tonal steel trust." The lack of success for his opera The Love of Three Oranges, commissioned by the Chicago Opera in 1921, was enough to spur Prokofiev's relocation to Europe .
On return trips to Russia in 1927 and 1929 Prokofiev was enthusiastically received. Following a comparative lack of success in Europe and the United States , he returned to Stalin's Soviet Union for good in 1932. The next years produced Lieutenant Kijé, Romeo and Juliet, War and Peace and Cinderella . In his homeland he was celebrated and honoured until the 1948 crackdown on Soviet composers by the Central Committee under Stalin's orders. After that time all music had to conform to strict criteria to "advance Soviet musical culture so as to lead to the creation, in all fields of music, of high-quality works worthy of the Soviet people." The result was uncontroversial music of artistic inconsequence.
Prokofiev died of a brain haemorrhage in Moscow on March 5th, 1953 . The fact that he died on the same day as Russian dictator Stalin even cheated him of a proper funeral. The flower shops of Moscow were emptied by those mourning Stalin's passing, and only a single pine branch could be found to lay on Prokofiev's coffin. He was buried near Scriabin and Chekov.
* Russian composer - contemporary of Prokofiev
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