Written by user1 on 18 June 2018. Posted in XV Season

Semperoper Dresden Ballett – Semper Signatures

Semperoper Ballett Dresden

Cacti

XV Dance Open International Ballet Festival and 55th Anniversary of the Sister Cities Relations of St.Petersburg and Dresden

Alexandrinsky Theatre12+

April 21, 2016 19:00

Dance Open Anniversary Season will have on agenda 3 one-act ballets of Dresden Ballet Company, all different in their style and choreography language. Nevertheless, there is one common feature between them: an attempt to reveal the meaning of dance in our lives. Some people are searching for an answer in a different cultural and mental space while the others take an ironic attitude when addressing their works to ballet critics as they try to clear the genre from excessive and superficial interpretations. In other words, all three masterpieces approach the audience directly, without intermediaries.

TANZSUITE

Choreography: Alexei RatmanskyMusic: Richard Strauss

For Alexei Ratmansky this ballet piece is more like an exercise in the neo-baroque period. Strauss melodies create an ideal background for the dance. Ratmansky’s choreography language is more about playing with the structure and form; although it is based on the classical ballet material, it also goes in line with the present and the humour. One can witness a dialogue from different times onstage: just as Richard Strauss in 1923 adapted François Couperin’s Dance Suite, the choreography of Alexey Ratmansky is somehow reminiscent of such ancient dances, as zarabanda, courante and others. A net of breathtaking and interconnected choreography etudes, subtly and gradually following one another, amazingly entertain by itself. The compositions remind the water in communicating vessels, while changing the shape they preserve the single entity and eventually add up in a complete puzzle, made by a talented artist.

Breathtakingly inventive, formally rigorous and gorgeously dancey.

Ratmansky skillfully embodied Strauss music in movement. The production looks complete.

IM ANDEREN RAUM

Choreography: Pontus LidbergMusic: Max Richter

More than seven centuries ago Rumi, a famous Iranian philosopher and poet, wrote the verses that he called “The Worship of the Heart”. His poetry made one believe in the greatness of any human being, he made no difference between a vagabond and a rich man in an exquisite turban. In another millennium a young and restless (and absolutely northern) Pontus Lidberg decided to translate his words in choreography images. The ancient philosopher helped him with the Sufi rhythmical meditation. Rumi founded the Order of Whirling Dervishes: his students tried to dive into the depths of knowledge through mystical movements to the sound of flute. It was the dance that led them to this knowledge. Lidberg creates a poetical image of a wandering character who wakes up in order to get to know another type of space. Partly it is the world of meditating conscience, partly — an attempt to look beyond the grave, but mostly it is the spiritual sphere of adjusting cultures. Other cultural values form another universe. However the driving force behind these universes for Persian sufis and the Swedish choreographer is the same. It is love and no matter how they express it. This etude was commissioned by the Semperoper Ballett and not only in terms of choreography, the music for it was created by Max Richter in close collaboration with Lidberg. It indicates one more time the desire of Dresden Ballet to create its own unique repertoire programme.

Pontus Lidberg develops a complex unity of dance, music and projection from the rich poetry of Persian mystic Rumi.

The tenderness of the music and the gentleness of the movements spread something like a protective sheath above the excellent "dream-dancers", so that even expressive movements of struggle resolve themselves in poetic melancholy.

CACTI

Choreography: Alexander EkmanMusic: Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn

Aleksander Ekman's renowned hooliganism is a joyful and intelligent parody of choreography. It is a giggling, affectionate and often hilarious deconstruction of the art form’s greater excesses. Is it really a parody on choreography only? Ekman admits that it is silly reviews of critics that prompted him make this piece. He believes the fact that critics exist is not fair, for spectators have the right to have their own opinion, too! Cacti. Cacti are everywhere and they are a metaphor of “the thorns of the humanity”. They are very much alike, like the drops of water. They symbolize non-competent critics. The dancers move around the stage thorny plants and their thorns represent the thorny remarks of critics. Indeed, the artists always have to do all the dirty, ungrateful and hard work when creating a new work. And, yet… It might be that cacti are a metaphor of the ballet dancer’s fate? They are capable to adapt to any conditions and they don’t need much sun or water. And, yet… It might be that cacti are classical plots, stereotypes of ballet expectations that the audience is very much aware of. And it does not matter what a choreographer wants to tell us, because we will still be waiting for familiar pa and silhouettes. And, yet… М?

It had me laughing until tears ran down my face.

The whip-smart timing of this piece as it juggles these incongruous elements is pure pleasure.

With equal ease he presses the ensemble hard with furious music by Haydn and Beethoven, exposes his dancers’ minds in a subtle duet and makes a suggestive wink to Dada with an absurdist tableau vivant. No lack of ideas here.

Artistic director of the Semperoper Ballet Dresden Aaron S. Watkin

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Written by user1 on 18 June 2018. Posted in XV Season

Perm Ballet – Romeo and Juliet

Perm Ballet

ROMEO AND JULIET

Dedicated to the 125th Anniversary of Sergei Prokofiev

Choreography: Kenneth MacMillanLibretto: Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Radlov, based on Shakespeare’s tragedy

Alexandrinsky Theatre 12+

April 18-19, 2016 19:00

Romeo and Juliet, the most famous lovers on the planet, live and die on stage, in music, in cinema for more than 400 years. They are immortal, just like love and like hatred that lied between their families are. No one counted the number of versions of this story, there must be more than dozens of hundreds of them with more than a hundred in choreography only. Then why have we decided to include the Romeo and Juliet in our Anniversary Season in which we aim to surprise? Because in the year of 125th anniversary of Sergei Prokofiev our festival programme will not be full without his mystical music. Because Kenneth MacMillan is the legend of the world ballet, but it is almost impossible to see his choreography in Russia for various reasons. Because by adding to the marvelous Perm Ballet and magnificent Renaissance costumes created by the Italian designers brilliant dancers from Royal Ballet and Dutch National we are creating a unique version of Macmillan iconic ballet. And, finally, we believe in love. We believe in that it has the power over absolutely everything in this life and even death means not an end of love but its transition to another dimension…

Kenneth thought the Prokofiev score was one of the very best ballet scores ever written.

MacMillan’s particular feature is the abundance of dance. Compared to all other versions of Romeo and Juliet that were staged in our country from the times of the Soviet Union this one is the most difficult.

The costumes in the performance are truly amazing, not only thanks to the impressive quality of the fabrics and designer solutions, but also because of the adherence to the Renaissance traditions.

The Perm Ballet Company produced a Romeo and Juliet that fizzed and crackled with energy.

A spectacular asset to the repertoire . . . altogether a milestone for MacMillan Observer, 1965 Kenneth MacMillan takes his place as one of the world’s leading choreographers Daily Mail Romeo and Juliet is the first full-length ballet of Kenneth MacMillan created by him on the poignant music of Sergey Prokofiev to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Willliam Shakespeare. However the ballet was eventually premiered one year later, in 1965. MacMillan originally staged Romeo and Juliet, for his muse Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, who were the Royal Ballet Principals at that time. Nevertheless, the honour of the first performance had gone to Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn who were a bigger draw for the upcoming Royal Ballet Tour to the USA and who were imposed in the ballet just a few days before the premiere. Fonteyn and Nureyev’s performance on the opening night was received with 43 curtain calls and almost forty minutes of applause. This production has been at the heart of the Royal Ballet repertoire ever since and it has been toured around the globe with various ballet companies. The Perm Ballet’s artistic director Alexey Miroshnichenko was the first one to bring classic MacMillan production on the Russian soil. It was premiered in 2013 at the Diaghilev Festival in Perm. Perm Ballet has done a great job in recreating lavish decorations and costumes from the original MacMillan production. According to the company’s artistic director Aleksey Miroshnichenko “this is a vivid performance, it hardly has any pantomimes. Of course it is complicated, but the spectators feel enrolled in it. And the most important thing is that it is more positive than the Lavrovsky’s version”. Now the audience of the 15th Anniversary DANCE OPEN International Ballet Festival will get an opportunity to see the legendary Romeo and Juliet in MacMillan’c choreography performed by the Perm Ballet.

KENNETH STAGED BALLET PRODUCTIONS ABOUT REAL PEOPLE WITH REAL FATES Interview with Lady Deborah MacMillan, a choreographer’s wife, a copyright holder of his ballet Romeo and Juliet — What is the history of creation of this ballet? There are different versions of what inspired Sir MacMillan to choreograph Romeo and Juliet. Some say that it was the ballet of the same name by Leonid Lavrovsky, which the Bolshoi Theatre showed on tour in London in 1956, with legendary Galina Ulanova dancing Juliet. Others say that John Cranko’s performance in Stuttgarter Ballett was the impulse. How did it all actually happen?— Kenneth was inspired to create his own Romeo and Juliet after seeing the Bolshoi perform the Lavrovsky version with Galina Ulanova in London in 1956. He particularly responded to Ulanova's dramatic expressivity with the classical language: she reinforced his belief that ballet could also express human drama as well as the fairy tales of classical ballet. Cranko who was a good friend had done a version and there was certainly friendly rivalry between them. Kenneth thought the Prokofiev score was one of the very best ballet scores ever written and when Frederick Ashton who was then Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet asked him to choreograph a full length ballet he immediately chose Romeo and Juliet. He choreographed it for Lynne Seymour and Christopher Gable. — Why did Sir Kenneth MacMillan decide to finish the plot of the ballet with the death of Veronese lovers? Why didn’t he give a chance to Montague and Capulet to reconcile? How does it correlate with the main idea of the ballet, in choreographer’s point of view? — As I was not in London at the time and indeed did not meet him until 1970, I can only assume that Kenneth ended the ballet with the death of the lovers and not with a reconciliation between the two families — as in Shakespeare — because of the drama of their deaths: he was a man of the theatre and a dramatic ending was always his preference. On the other hand, from what I can discover, Prokofiev did not write any music for a 'reconciliation', The happy ending he did for the Kirov' premiere was not his original intention. — In terms of his relations with Russia, Russian culture, Sir Kenneth MacMillan can be called “Tom Stoppard of ballet”. Would you agree with such a definition? — Both Tom Stoppard and Kenneth MacMillan are men of the theatre, Stoppard's language is obviously words and a fascination with their many meanings. Kenneth's language is classical ballet and he felt that by choreographing in this language he could give insights into the human condition, to relationships between human beings and above all to the telling of stories. This language transcends words, indeed complicated stories in ballet can be performed in many different countries and if the work is successful, an audience will connect with it without the need for words. — What was your husband’s attitude to Russia, its history and culture?— Kenneth was fascinated with Russia, its history its literature and its ballet companies. He first saw Russian dancers when he was a very young dancer himself. The Royal Ballet company was started by Ninette de Valois who had performed in the Diaghilev company: De Valois brought the Diaghilev ethos to the Royal Ballet — good music, good design and good choreography. Kenneth did several works with a Russian theme: Winter dreams, based on Chekov's Three Sisters; Anastasia, referencing the claim of Anna Andersen who claimed she was the Tsar's surviving daughter: and Isadora, the modern dancer (you have a photograph of her in your excellent staff canteen), who spent a lot of time in Russia and who married the Russian poet Esenin. Sadly Kenneth never visited Russia but it would have given him enormous pleasure to have seen the Perm Ballet perform his Romeo and Juliet and he would have considered it as a huge compliment. — In Russia, for the ballets which tell the story through dance and pantomime, they have a special term — “dram-ballet” (short for “dramatic ballet”). Examples of this genre are Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Zakharov’s The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. Because of its relation to soviet realm, the term gradually received negative connotation: something similar to “ballet for peasantry”, “ballet for simple people”. Which was the attitude to dramatic ballet in England? Would you agree that this term is applicable to Romeo and Juliet?— Kenneth said that he wanted to make ballets 'real', about real people with real lives with whom the audience could identify. He was very much a man of the theatre, and was very influenced by the new kind of drama which came to the fore in England in the 1950s with playwrights like John Osborne and his famous Look Back in Anger... Kenneth always felt that he could use the steps of classical ballet to tell this kind of story. Romeo and Juliet is certainly a dramatic ballet as you term it — and the audience is required to engage with the story and the whole stage picture — not just the dancing. As you know it was an immediate success with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, but the ballet was created (as I said before) on the astonishing dramatic and expressive ballerina Lynne Seymour and Christopher Gable (who became a very fine actor after his dancing career was over.) Interviewed by Natalia OvchinnikovaInterpreted by Sonya Permyakova Based on materials provided by Perm Ballett Now the audience of the 15th Anniversary DANCE OPEN International Ballet Festival will get an opportunity to see the legendary Romeo and Juliet in MacMillan’c choreography performed by the Perm Ballet.

«PROKOFIEV AND BALLET. LOVE STORY FOR LIFE» dedicated to the 125th Anniversary of the composer The relations between Sergei Prokofiev and ballet were not easy. His ballet music received controversial reviews from critics; in this area he experienced both thunderous defeats and breathtaking success, and he was often misunderstood. Nevertheless it did not stop him from coming back to ballet again and again, he left us incredible masterpieces and immortal Romeo and Juliet. He first saw the ballet in 1900, when he was 9 years old. It was The Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky and his impression was somehow mixed. By that time the young musician had already composed the opera called Giant, but he had not thought that writing music for ballet would become his fate. Diaghilev ballets became the turning point for Prokofiev, he was mesmerized by Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel and The Firebird and Petrushka by Stravinsky. In conversations with Diaghilev first appear vague outlines of Scythian Suite, a ballet on Russian prehistoric theme where the atmosphere of the Scythian "barbarism" is recreated. The ballet was initiated by Diaghilev who had The Rite of Spring on his mind. Prokofiev’s first steps in ballet were made under the influence of the brilliant music of Stravinsky. One of his first successful attempts in ballet was The Tale of the Buffoon (between 1915 and 1920). Bearing in mind a cruel joke that played with him the weakness of the libretto of his previous work, this time Prokofiev himself creates the libretto and borrows a plot for the ballet from Russian fairy tales retold by Afanasyev. This vivid and witty ballet was filled with funny episodes in Russian folklore style. The growing interest of the Western world to the Bolsheviks country was not left unnoticed by Diaghilev. He commissioned Prokofiev to make the ballet about the Soviet life. This is how the production with an intriguing title Le Pas d'Acier staged by Léonide Massine appeared. It consisted of several unrelated episodes: a train with speculators, commissars and papirosniks. The dancers showed the movements of machinery, machine tools and the noise of steam hammers. Unfortunately the performance that did not have a single plot was not successful neither in Paris nor in London. Prokofiev had got the chance to demonstrate his unconventional talent several years later in The Prodigal Son, staged in 1929. The contrast scenes: bacchanalia at the feast and the morning after a riotous night, and then a picture of the return of the son to his father's home, that is full of sorrow and humility, produce a very strong impression. The music in the ballet mesmerized by its simplicity, warmth and nobility. After The Prodigal Son Prokofiev created a sublime lyrical On the Dnieper that anticipated his three main works - Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella and The Tale of the Stone Flower. Soon after his return to the motherland in 1933, Prokofiev decided to create the ballet to Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The idea was given by Sergei Radlov, a prominent Shakespeare scholar and artistic director of Kirov Theatre. The composer started working on the score while creating the libretto with Radlov and Adrian Piltrovsky, a well-known St. Petersburg theatre critic and playwright. In 1936 the first version of the ballet, that had an unusual happy ending, was presented to the Direction of the Bolshoi Theatre. Although they had in generally a positive impression on the music, a happy final was put under question. For the final version approved by the Bolshoi a tragic ending was created. At the same time controversial articles criticizing the music of Shostakovich for ballet were published and the direction of the Bolshoi decided not to take the risk of staging Prokofiev’s work. The same decision was taken by the Leningrad Choreography Academy. The ballet was finally premiered in 1938 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. One-act ballet with choreography by Ivo Psota was very-well received by the audience. After that the Soviet Union decided to stage this production promptly in Kirov Theatre. The choreography for the ballet was made by Leonid Lavrovsky who had to go through the heated debates with the composer. Prokofiev initially did not want to put any changes to the ballet that he had created 4 years ago. Finally, another version of the ballet with several new dances and dramatic episodes was created. It was this version that became a summit of the Soviet ballet. The main roles were taken by Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeev. The role of Juliet became a hallmark for Ulianova, she was quoted saying "I could not start preparing the role of the Juliet with none of my students for quite a while. Parting with it for me meant the same as parting with a living person". Despite that in the beginning the ballerina could not get used to Prokofiev’s music and after the premiere she even joked "For never was a story of more woe than the music of Prokofiev in the ballet". Prokofiev’s success in ballet was firmed with Cinderella, an amazing fairy tale made in 1941-44, in the midst of the war. Its way to the stage was not easy either. Maya Plisetskaya remembered that "Before the premiere of Cinderella the theatre was literally on fire. The music that sounded for the first time on earth was unusual. The orchestra, either from the idleness or from the wrong following to the Marxist dogma that the art belongs to the people nearly rebelled against Prokofiev. His scores used to be simplified and modified before in the walls of our theatre. The most notorious example is the Romeo modified by Boris Pogrebov, a musician from the orchestra, for the sake of clumsy and deaf dancers. "Louder, louder, we cannot hear a thing" – they were shouting from the stage… Prokofiev, who visited all the rehearsals, kept silence politely while trembling from anger. I felt pity for him. It was not easy to bear this, I guess". Today, 125 years from the birth of Prokofiev and 63 years after his death, his ballets are not just alive, they became classics of the world ballet. In the Dance Open Anniversary Season Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in the legendary production of Sir Kenneth MacMillan will be performed by the Perm Ballet.

Choreography: Kenneth MacMillanPerformed by:Juliet – Sarah Lamb (Principal Dancer of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden)Romeo – Matthew Golding (Principal Dancer of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden)Tybalt – Gary Avis (Principal Character Artist of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden)Musical Director and Conductor: Teodor CurrentzisArtistic Director: Alexey MiroshnichenkoConductor: Andrey DanilovBallet Master–Producer: Gary Harris (the UK)Ballet Master–Producer: Karl Burnett (the UK/ France)Set Designer: Mauro Carosi (Italy)Associate Set Designer: Cinzia Lo Fazio (Italy)Costume Designer: Odette Nicoletti (Italy)Associate Costume Designer: Luigi Benedetti (Italy)Costume Production Curator: Tatyana Noginova (Russia)Lighting Designer: Sergey Martynov The ballet is staged in collaboration with the Kenneth MacMillan Foundation in accordance with MacMillan’s style and technique

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Written by user1 on 18 June 2018. Posted in XV Season

Wiener Staatsballett – Blaubarts Geheimnis

Wiener Staatsballett

BLAUBARTS GEHEIMNIS

Alexandrinsky Theatre 12+

April 16, 2016 19:00

Philosophically minded critics like to call our time the era of allusions and reminiscences. The mankind has accumulated such a wealth of knowledge, experience, impressions and thoughts embodied on canvas and paper, in music and dance that it seems impossible to come up with something new that would not be a quote, replica, or at least a reference to the great works of the past. The White and Black is an example of how art is conceived today, not from a scratch but as an attempt of Wiener Staatsballett to reconsider the experience of the great artists of the past — Leonardo, Perrault and Rossini - from the standpoint of a man of the 21st century.

LE SOUFFLE DE L’ESPRIT

Choreography: Jiří Bubeníček Music: Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Pachelbel, Roman Hoffstetter, Otto Bubeníček

Once upon a time on the summer evening of 2007 Marie-Agnès Gillot presented to Jiří Bubeníček an album of Da Vinci reproductions. Looking through the album Jiří thought how the titans of the Renaissance worshipped the radiant life and its sister, death. The appearance and disappearance, coming into this world and departure to the mysterious far end — two sides of the same coin, two highest points of the amplitude of the eternally swinging pendulum… Let there be light in joy, but let there be also light in sorrow, for it indicates the beginning of a new cycle, new round of an eternal spiral.

Jiří Bubeníček’s Le Souffle de l’esprit meets the highest esthetics standards.

The dancers literally radiate the frantic obsession with the movement, in these moments the audience freezes, breathless.

In the final part of Le Souffle de l’esprit a small universe is discovered: the trio performs the dance that takes the breath away to the famous canon of Pachelbel. Bubeníček frees himself from any stylistic bounds and let the dancers in impulsive movements first find each other and later lose again.

SKEW-WHIFF

Choreography: Paul Lightfoot and Sol León Music: Gioachino Rossini

This lovely bric-à-brac created by Paul Lightfoot and Sol León 20 years ago has become a part of the international repertoire. A golden enamel of Rossini’s overture written in calligraphic handwriting does not give a second for exhalation, but now and then there are blots and characters written the other way round among the lines. These 15 minutes require a virtuoso technique and comic abilities from artists. How complicated it is to demonstrate the perfect flexibility and clumsiness at the same time, to keep up with the furious pace of the music and leisurely roll over from emotion to emotion, draw a difficult and fancy choreographic pattern and make funny faces. Only big artists can do that.

Skew-Whiff is an amazing production that can captivate and fascinate the audience.

In Skew-Whiff we see a passionate courtship dance of three males around one lady. Witty, surprising, touching.

Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon's Skew-Whiff, performed to Rossini's Thieving Magpie overture and proving that classic and contemporary can exist in perfect harmony and even fuse to give us something both funny and exciting.

BLAUBARTS GEHEIMNIS

Choreography: Stephan ThossMusic: Philip Glass

It is difficult for men and women to find the common ground and the old fairy tale about Knight Bluebeard confirms that. But it is never too late to try again. That is — almost never… This ballet shows us where the desire and ability to love come from. It shows us what hinders the growth and bloom of this fragile flower. It is about an eternal longing to be understood. In fact, they both want to be happy. Experienced Bluebeard dreams of being loved and understood. Young Judith, who gets to know this mysterious world for the first time, wants to bathe in love and give it away without counting. But the past lies between them. Here is the truth of our time: today very few of us remain faithful to the first love for life. Most of us, just like Bluebeard, transfer our emotional and sexual experience into the new relations. Lost love leaves scars and traces in the human soul and affects all future relations. Everyone has a skeleton in the closet and we expect our new soul mate to accept it. All of us rather early in life realize that there might be a collapse in love, acquire uncertainty and mistrust in a partner, but we all, nevertheless, firmly believe that love can cure everything. Bluebeard takes Judith around the castle of his memory. By opening the doors, one by one, he shares with the wife a part of his life in order to see whether she would be able to accept it. Finally, they stop in front of the last door. Judith has to open it herself, for it hides the most lurking secret — the memories of the mother. Every man was once a tender child, and if he was taken care of and loved by his mother, then he will be capable to love himself. And if she was cold and indifferent, how could a grown-up man know what the love is? He cannot trust his feelings as he did not learn how to do it in his childhood. And this is what makes the most intimate secret of Bluebeard. Although Judith managed to break this spell, the future of her love is still open. Any equilibrium in relations is temporary and the balance may change at any time. Which means that the story goes on.

The ballet again reveals the harmony of liberated bodies as only love can do. Stefan Toss demonstrates that love itself can dance if we let it do it.

The history of Bluebeard is only a metaphor through which Toss can subtly tell us about the twists and turns of love, about guilt and pain, and the strength of two people who, despite everything, decided to continue their relations.

Dynamically, brutally and with blinding flashes of passion Thoss tells us the history of one fateful affair.

Director of the Wiener StaatsBallett Manuel Legris

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Written by user1 on 18 June 2018. Posted in XV Season

Sergei Prokofiev

About himself

I believe that a composer, just like a poet, sculptor or artist, should serve to people and nations.

Classic composer is a madman who is making works that his generation won’t understand.

The music gets simpler. I see how the new simplicity speaks not only about my own style, one can also find it in the works of other composers… It is, undoubtedly, the reaction on the extreme manifestations of modernism. I am evolving to the simplicity of forms, less difficult counterpoints and more melodic style, this is what I call “the new simplicity”.

My inspiration does not benefit from the foreign air, for I am Russian and living in exile does not suit me.

I am indifferent to politics. I am a composer from start to finish. I am satisfied with any government that allows me to write music peacefully, that publishes everything that I am writing before the inks get dry and that performs any note coming out of my pen.

Cinderella, Ballet Monte-Carlo

Cinderella, Perm Ballet

Romeo and Juliet, Perm Ballet

Sergei Prokofiev

About Prokofiev

I reach for the Sun the most thanks to several geniuses that I have the honour to know. The Sun King once said “The Government is me”. You, my dear Prokofiev, could have said “The Sun is me”

His music is full of melodies, some of the parts of Le pas d'acier one can tell for the music of Mozart as if he could have lived today

Once upon a time on a sunny day I was walking down the Arbat when I saw a very unusual man. There was some challenging power about himself and he passed me by as a phenomenon. In bright yellow shoes, checkered, with red and orange tie. I could not help turning back – it was Prokofiev

To the chairman of the globe in music from the chairman of the globe in poetry. Mayakovsky to Prokofiev

This man, of course, knew all the terrible truth about his time, but he did not let it suppress him. It might be that the nature granted him with other principles and other benchmarks compared to the majority of people

The creative heritage of Prokofiev is something so harmonious that it is surprising how the 20th “spraint joints” century could have produced something like this… This sunlight was indestructible and Prokofiev carried it all the way through the troubles in life

The music was for him the all-absorbing substance, the meaning, the form of existence. Everything in the life of Prokofiev obeyed to its God. If many artists found an inspiration when confronted by the real life conflicts, Prokofiev seemed to have an autonomous “power system” and follow his internal sources rather than “ a nine-days wonder”

Prokofiev’s music can be more or less successful, or genius, but it is always pure. And then the purity is the ideal of real religion Prokofiev, as a child, used to say all what was on his mind. He could always say something wrong. All depended on his attitude to a person. I remember my first performance of Myaskovsky’s sonata, to which the author came together with Prokofiev. Sonata had a fast final. After the performance Prokofiev came to me behind the stage and said delightfully: “You know, when you were playing low I could not hear a single note.” And then he saw my face. “But when you were playing on the upper strings, he continued, these were the diamonds!” He had plenty of humour. Sometimes he made fun of the instruments.

When I was telling to Prokofiev the episodes (of Alexander Nevsky), the positions of characters, I could see him ticking the rhythms and it seemed to me that the music was conceived… Prokofiev works like clock. The clock is not fast or slow. His accuracy in time derives from his accuracy in work. It is about the absolute accuracy of the musical image