Prokofiev, Sergey Sergeyevich (1891–1953)

Russian composer. His music includes operas such as The Love for Three Oranges (after Carlo Gozzi, 1921); ballets for Sergei Diaghilev, including Romeo and Juliet (1935); seven symphonies including the Classical Symphony (1916–17); music for film, including Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938); piano and violin concertos; songs and cantatas (for example, that composed for the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution); and Peter and the Wolf (1936) for children, to his own libretto after a Russian folk tale.

Prokofiev was essentially a classicist in his use of form, but his large and varied output shows great lyricism, humour, and skill. His music in his earlier years has a hard brilliance, but his later works show a mellowing and maturity of style. Born near Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovs'k), he studied at St Petersburg under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and achieved fame as a pianist. He left Russia in 1918 and lived for some time in the USA and in Paris, but returned in 1927 and again in 1935.

Prokofiev began to compose almost before he could write, and tried his hand at an opera at the age of nine. He was sent to Glière for lessons, wrote 12 piano pieces in 1902 as well as a symphony for piano duet, and at age 12 set Pushkin's play A Feast in Time of Plague as an opera. At the St Petersburg Conservatory, which he left in 1914, he studied piano with Anna Essipova, composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatol Liadov, and conducting with Nikolai Tcherepnin. By that time he had written many works, including the first piano concerto, which won the Rubinstein Prize. He then set to work on a ballet commission for Sergei Diaghilev that became the Scythian Suite for orchestra.

In 1918 he left Russia, living in the UK, France, Japan, and the USA before returning to Russia. The opera The Love for Three Oranges was produced at Chicago in 1921, and the next year he went to live in Paris and became connected with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet), which produced several of his works. The visionary opera The Fiery Angel was completed in 1923 but not staged until 1955. Limited opportunities in the West caused him to return to Russia.

In 1936 he settled in Moscow. He was persuaded by the Soviet government to make his style more simple and popular; this is very noticeable in such works as Peter and the Wolf and the quantities of film music he wrote there. However, the cantata from the film music for Alexander Nevsky is one of his most powerful scores. Two years later he began his great patriotic opera War and Peace, and the victory in the war against Hitler was celebrated with one of his finest scores, the exuberant and expansive 5th symphony. Like many other Soviet composers, he was severely criticized in the Zhdanov censures, in 1948, for formalism (the separation of form from content). Ironically, after enduring years of Stalinist oppression, he died on the same day as Stalin.

Works Opera The Love for Three Oranges (after Carlo Gozzi, 1921), The Fiery Angel (1919–27, produced 1955), War and Peace (after Tolstoy, 1941–52, produced 1953).

Ballets The Buffoon (1921), Le pas d'acier (1927), L'enfant prodigue, Romeo and Juliet (after Shakespeare, 1938), Cinderella (1945).

Orchestral includes Classical Symphony (1921) and six other symphonies (1924–52); film music for Lieutenant Kijé (1934), Ivan the Terrible; five piano concertos (1911–32), two violin concertos (1917, 1935).

Chamber two string quartets (1930, 1941), sonata for two violins, sonatas in D major and F minor for violin and piano (1944, 1946).

Piano and songs nine piano sonatas, about 25 other Op. nos. of piano pieces, including Visions fugitives; eight sets of songs (one without words, one to words by Pushkin).

Choral Alexander Nevsky (1939).