From the Classical Vault Dept.: Thirty-five years later, Harlow Robinson’s Prokofiev biography is still the best of an ever-increasing shelf of such studies. But for the best overall picture of the composer and his life, read it alongside Robinson’s more recent volume of selected letters by Prokofiev – and then tackle the three-volume autobiography. And click here for my review of one of the concerts mentioned below.
TEN YEARS IN THE MAKING! Eight trips to the Soviet Union! What sounds like a spy thriller is in truth a biography of one of this century’s most popular and controversial composers, Sergei Prokofiev, written by SUNY-Albany professor Harlow Robinson.
“I’m glad to be able to do something musical to tie in with it,” says Robinson, who had a hand in the programming of the two concerts.
Saturday at 8 PM pianist, William Jones is joined by a number of other artists at the SUNYA Recital Hall in a variety of Prokofiev’s chamber music. “Bill was very enthusiastic when he heard I was writing the book,” Robinson says. “And he supplied some of the material that’s in it. He studied piano with Alexander Barovsky, who wrote a nice personal portrait of Prokofiev in his memoirs. Unfortunately, those memoirs never got published, but Bill got a copy of them, in Russian, from Barovsky’s widow.”
As soloist, Jones will play Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 3 (“From Old Notebooks”) and selections from the Op. 12 collection. He will be joined by soprano Anne Turner in “Five Poems of Anna Akhmatova,” Op. 27, sung in Russian, and “The Ugly Duckling,” Op. 18.
“I wanted her to do the ‘Ugly Duckling,’” says Robinson. “It was a piece that had a lot of meaning to the composer, who considered himself a bit of one. And there were many people who had no trouble pointing it out to him, too.
“I’ve always loved the Akhmatova songs, and I don’t think they’re as well-known as they ought to be. They’re early works, written in 1916 when Prokofiev was 25, very spare, very Mussorgsky-like.
“Those Opus 12 pieces are also early, early Prokofiev, a product of the time when he was known as the bad boy of Russian music.”
The concert also includes the Overture on Hebrew Themes for Clarinet, String Quartet and Piano, Op. 34, in which Jones is joined by violinists Anne-Marie Barker and Janet Rowe, violist Susan St. Amour, cellist Erica Pickhardt and clarinetist Susan Martula.
“Prokofiev came to the U.S. in 1919,” the biographer explains, “and ran into an ensemble of Jewish musicians he knew from St. Petersburg. They asked him to write this piece, which was first performed in New York in 1920.”
The second concert, at 8 PM Tuesday in the SUNYA Main Theater, features the University Community Orchestra and Chorale under the direction of Nathan Gottschalk, whom Robinson describes as another Prokofiev enthusiast and longtime supporter of the biography.
“The program features the cantata ‘Alexander Nevsky,’” Robinson says, “which also will be shown in its film version Friday at 8 PM. This is an rare opportunity to see both, because they’re quite different.”
Prokofiev wrote ‘Nevsky’ as a film score for director Sergei Eisenstein in 1938, depicting the defense of Novgorod in 1242 by Prince Alexander Yaroslavitch Nevsky against the Knights of the Teutonic.
“In the film score, Prokofiev was experimenting with things like the electronic distortion of horns. He was fascinated with the possibilities electronics had to offer.”
Mezzo-soprano Carol Randles will be featured in the cantata; pianist Randall Hodgkinson will play the Concerto No. 3, the most popular of Prokofiev’s five concertos for that instrument. Also on the program are excerpts from the ballet “Romeo and Juliet.”
Another Prokofiev-Eisenstein collaboration was the epic movie “Ivan the Terrible,” which will be shown in two parts beginning at 7 PM Sunday.
“It’s practically on opera,” says Robinson. “And that’s not surprising when you consider that Eisenstein was an opera director who staged Wagner at the Bolshoi Theater.”
Tickets for all events are on sale at the SUNYA Performing Arts Center.
– Metroland Magazine, 23 April 1987
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