Symphony No. 6 (Prokofiev)

Last updated

Symphony No. 6
by Sergei Prokofiev
Mravinsky Prokofiev Op111 premiere.jpg
Yevgeny Mravinsky and Prokofiev taking a bow after the second performance on October 12, 1947
Key E-flat minor
Opus 111
Composed1945 (1945)–47
Duration42 min
MovementsThree
Premiere
DateOctober 11, 1947 (1947-10-11)
Location Leningrad Philharmonic Hall
Leningrad, Russian SFSR
Conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky
Performers Leningrad Philharmonic

The Symphony No. 6 in E-flat minor, Op. 111, by Sergei Prokofiev was completed and premiered in 1947. [1] Sketches for the symphony exist as early as from June 1945; Prokofiev had reportedly begun work on it prior to composing his Fifth Symphony. He later remarked that the Sixth memorialized the victims of the Great Patriotic War.

Contents

Despite the enthusiastic interest of Alexander Gauk, Prokofiev instead chose to have the Sixth's premiere conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, who was impressed by the symphony after the composer played it for him. The premiere, which was played by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra on October 11, 1947, was a success. Initially, the symphony was received very warmly in the Soviet press; it was compared favorably with Dmitri Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony. In 1948, it came under attack during the Zhdanovschina, including from critics who had previously praised it.

After Prokofiev's death, the Sixth was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union. It also gained critical favor in the West, where reaction had initially been mixed. According to Tempo , the Sixth is the "great, crowning" work of Prokofiev's symphonic output.

Background

Israel Nestyev  [ ru ] reported that the composer had begun sketching out what eventually became the Sixth Symphony before he had embarked upon composing the Fifth. [2] Prokofiev himself declared that work on the Sixth and its predecessor had overlapped. He also referred to both symphonies as "distractions" from his work on the opera Khan Buzai, a project which ultimately was unrealized. [3] The first extant sketches for the Sixth are dated June 23, 1945. The sketch score was completed on October 9, 1946, whereupon he set it down for several weeks before starting the orchestration on December 10. Prokofiev completed the symphony on February 18, 1947. [1] He briefly considered dedicating the symphony to the memory of Ludwig van Beethoven. Although the symphony shares the same opus number as Beethoven's final piano sonata, one of Prokofiev's favorite works, Nestyev said that the composer had contemplated the dedication because of "a desire to carry on the tradition of lofty intellectualism and profound tragedy that characterized Beethoven's later works". [4]

In the weeks following the symphony's completion, Alexander Gauk expressed to Prokofiev his eagerness to premiere it. [5] Nevertheless, the composer invited Yevgeny Mravinsky to hear him play his new symphony. On March 21, 1947, Mravinsky traveled with Prokofiev's friend Levon Atovmyan  [ ru ] to the composer's dacha in Nikolina Gora  [ ru ]. After listening to Prokofiev's playthrough, Mravinsky praised the music's scope. He told the composer's companion, Mira Mendelson, that the music sounded as if it had "spanned one horizon to the other". He immediately requested to lead the premiere. [1]

Prokofiev prepared a brief description of the symphony ahead of its world premiere:

The first movement is agitated, at times lyrical, at times austere; the second movement, "Largo", is brighter and more tuneful; the finale, rapid and in a major key, is close in character to my Fifth Symphony, save for reminiscences of the austere passages in the first movement. [4]

Nestyev recalled that in October 1947 the composer had told him the symphony had been conceived as a reflection on the destruction of the recently concluded Great Patriotic War:

Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds that cannot be healed. One has lost those dear to him, another has lost his health. These must not be forgotten. [4]

On October 8, 1947, Prokofiev arrived in Leningrad to assist Mravinsky in the rehearsals with the Leningrad Philharmonic. [6] During the rehearsals for the symphony, Prokofiev described to Mendelson, whom he had married in January, that the "reminiscences" heard near the finale's coda were "questions cast into eternity". [7] After she repeatedly requested him to elaborate on their meaning, the composer replied: "What is life?" [8]

Music

External audio
Performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky
Nuvola apps arts.svg I. Allegro moderato
Nuvola apps arts.svg II. Largo
Nuvola apps arts.svg III. Vivace

Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony consists of three movements:

  1. Allegro moderato (E-flat minor, ends in E-flat major)
  2. Largo (A-flat major)
  3. Vivace (E-flat major)

A typical performance lasts approximately 42 minutes. [9]

Instrumentation

The symphony is scored for:

Premiere

The world premiere of Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony occurred on October 11, 1947, at the Leningrad Philharmonic Hall, performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Mravinsky. It concluded a program which had also included music by Tchaikovsky. [10] After the concert, Mravinsky confided to Prokofiev and Mendelson that the performance of the symphony was marred by a number of instrumental mishaps which had left him unhappy and unable to sleep. [8] The following night, after attending a performance at the Kirov Opera of his War and Peace , Prokofiev left with his companion to hear the second performance of his Sixth Symphony. This time the orchestra played the score flawlessly. Prokofiev and Mravinsky both took several curtain calls during which they were photographed together. [11]

Reception

Soviet Union

In the weeks prior to the Sixth Symphony's world premiere, Prokofiev's biographer Nestyev and the music critic Grigori Schneerson  [ ru ] complained that the composer was being "stingy" with explanations of a work they and the musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic found difficult. [8] The former would later write that in this symphony Prokofiev "once again began to speak in a very difficult and at times esoteric language". [12] Nikolai Myaskovsky, the composer's colleague and longtime friend, also found the symphony challenging: "I began to understand the Prokofiev [Sixth Symphony] only on the third hearing and then I was won over: profound, but somewhat gloomy, and harshly orchestrated". [13]

The level of acclaim that the Sixth Symphony initially received from Soviet audiences and critics was comparable to that for the Fifth. The audience at the world premiere gave it a nearly 30-minute standing ovation. [14] "It is wonderful, better than the usual Prokofiev", Schneerson told Alexander Werth before the symphony's Moscow premiere. "It is philosophic, has the depth of Shostakovich. You'll see!" [15] Likewise, Nestyev wrote in Sovietskoye Iskusstvo that the symphony depicted a "nerve-wracking juxtaposition" of the "private world of modern man against the terrifying machinery of universal destruction", adding that its "noble humanism" placed it alongside the Eighth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. [16] He also described the finale as being "in the spirit of Mozart or Glinka", but that its cheerful mood was dispelled by the invasion of a "titan" whose "incessantly repeated fanfares" reawaken the tragic sonorities from earlier in the symphony. [17] The music critic of Leningradskaya Pravda praised the symphony as "another stunning victory for Soviet art", adding that "the optimism of this [work], its strong-willed intonations, character, and lyricism reflect the many facets of our people". [6] Musicologist Yulian Weinkop  [ ru ] elicited Prokofiev's approval by comparing the symphony's opening to the scrape of a rusty key turning in a door lock, before revealing a "world of warmth, affection, and beauty". [18] According to Simon Morrison, its premiere was the "last unhampered, unmediated success" the composer would ever experience. [19]

Nevertheless, the Sixth was among the works excoriated by Andrei Zhdanov and Tikhon Khrennikov the following year during their campaign against formalism in music. [20] The latter lambasted what he perceived as its composer's inability to keep the symphony's "lively and limpid ideas" from being drowned in "contrived chaotic groanings", [21] ultimately dismissing it as a "failure". [22] Nestyev reversed his earlier approval, now decrying the symphony as "clearly formalist", an about-face which Atovmyan openly criticized. [23] Nestyev later described the symphony as a "contest for complexity" which "made it difficult to grasp". [24] Prokofiev felt deeply betrayed by Nestyev, whom he dubbed a "Judas", [25] and permanently severed his friendship with him. [17]

After Prokofiev's death, during the Khrushchev Thaw, the Sixth was again reevaluated by Soviet critics. Aram Khachaturian listed it among the works in which he felt that the composer maintained his "guiding principle" of "service to his people, to mankind". [26] Boris Yarustovsky called the symphony a "true war symphony", ascribing to its predecessor only a "general feeling of patriotism", and opining that the work's numbering fated it to its tragic cast which "resemble almost all Russian sixth symphonies"; while Genrikh Orlov extolled it as "an outstanding symphony of our time". [27] While maintaining his previous criticisms of the symphony, Nestyev also wrote that it was "not only an important event in the creative history of an outstanding musician, but also a unique artistic monument of its time". [13]

In the West

Abroad reaction to the Sixth was initially mixed. After the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski played the American premiere on November 24, 1949, [28] Musical America called the Sixth "the most personal, the most accessible, and emotionally revealing work of Prokofiev that has yet been played in this country". [29] Paul Affelder, the music critic for the Brooklyn Eagle , wrote that the Sixth was a "worthwhile piece of music", but objected to its structure:

Those who expected a work of the sturdy, but joyful proportions of this composer's popular Fifth Symphony came away disappointed. For the Sixth ... is an austere symphony whose mood does not relax until the third movement... [Its] structure does not satisfy us—at least not on a first hearing... If the composer ever revises this work, he would like to see the third movement shortened and shorn of its dramatic ending—in other words, transformed into a bona fide scherzo—and then have everything resolve in a fourth movement of heavier proportions. [30]

The Sixth was sufficiently successful at its American premiere that Stokowski decided to reprogram it at a subsequent concert on December 6. [31] That performance was broadcast live by CBS and was the first time the symphony was heard on the radio in the United States. [32]

In response to the Swiss premiere in 1951, Robert-Aloys Mooser attacked the Sixth as another of Prokofiev's "insane, base compositions". He added that the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande was jeopardizing its reputation by playing it. [33]

A brief obituary for Prokofiev which was published in the spring 1953 issue of Tempo said that the Sixth's large-scale architecture and attempts at optimism "did not really suit his talent". [34] However, another critic writing in the same magazine in 1970 called the Sixth the "great, crowning" work of Prokofiev's symphonic output. [35]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sergei Prokofiev</span> Russian composer and pianist (1891–1953)

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yevgeny Mravinsky</span> Soviet conductor (1903–1988)

Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Mravinsky was a Soviet and Russian conductor, pianist, and music pedagogue; he was a professor at Leningrad State Conservatory.

The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The premiere was a "triumphal success" that appealed to both the public and official critics, receiving an ovation that lasted well over half an hour.

The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54 by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1939, and first performed in Leningrad on November 5, 1939 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky.

The Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70, was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1945. It was premiered on 3 November 1945 in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky.

The Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77, was originally composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1947–48. He was still working on the piece at the time of the Zhdanov Doctrine, and it could not be performed in the period following the composer's denunciation. In the time between the work's initial completion and the first performance, the composer, sometimes with the collaboration of its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, worked on several revisions. The concerto was finally premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 29 October 1955. It was well-received, Oistrakh remarking on the "depth of its artistic content" and describing the violin part as a "pithy 'Shakespearian' role."

The Song of the Forests, Op. 81, is an oratorio by Dmitri Shostakovich composed in the summer of 1949. It was written to celebrate the forestation of the Russian steppes following the end of World War II. The composition originally included texts by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky praising Joseph Stalin as the "great gardener"; these references were eliminated after his death. Premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 15 November 1949, the work was well received by the government, earning the composer a Stalin Prize the following year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symphony No. 4 (Prokofiev)</span>

Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4 is actually two works, both using material created for The Prodigal Son ballet. The first, Op. 47, was completed in 1930 and premiered that November; it lasts about 22 minutes. The second, Op. 112, is too different to be termed a "revision"; made in 1947, it is about 37 minutes long, differs stylistically from the earlier work, reflecting a new context, and differs formally as well in its grander instrumentation. Accordingly there are two discussions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symphony No. 1 (Prokofiev)</span> 1917 symphony by Sergei Prokofiev

The Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, also known as the Classical, was Sergei Prokofiev's first numbered symphony. He began to compose it in 1916 and completed it on September 10, 1917. It was composed as a modern reinterpretation of the classical style of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The symphony's nickname was bestowed upon it by the composer. It premiered on April 18, 1918, in Petrograd, conducted by Prokofiev. It has remained one of his most popular works.

<i>Romeo and Juliet</i> (Prokofiev) 1935 ballet by Sergei Prokofiev

Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev made from the ballet three orchestral suites and a suite for solo piano.

Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, in 1912 and completed it the next year. However, that version of the concerto is lost; the score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution. Prokofiev reconstructed the work in 1923, two years after finishing his Piano Concerto No. 3, and declared it to be "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered [Piano Concerto] No. 4." Indeed, its orchestration has features that clearly postdate the 1921 concerto. Performing as soloist, Prokofiev premiered this "No. 2" in Paris on 8 May 1924 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting. It is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April 1913 after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuil Samosud</span> Soviet conductor (1884–1964)

Samuil Abramovich Samosud was a Soviet and Russian conductor and pedagogue.

Sergei Prokofiev composed and compiled his Waltz Suite, Op. 110, during the Soviet Union's post-Great Patriotic War period of 1946–1947.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote the symphonic suite The Year 1941 in 1941.

<i>Lieutenant Kijé</i> (Prokofiev) 1934 film music and orchestral suite

Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé music was originally written to accompany the film of the same name, produced by the Belgoskino film studios in Leningrad in 1933–34 and released in March 1934. It was Prokofiev's first attempt at film music, and his first commission.

Konstantin Saradzhev was an Armenian conductor and violinist. He was an advocate of new Russian music, and conducted a number of premieres of works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Aram Khachaturian. His son Konstantin Konstantinovich Saradzhev was a noted bell ringer and musical theorist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lina Prokofiev</span> Spanish singer (1897–1989)

Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva, born Carolina Codina Nemísskaia, was a Spanish singer and the first wife of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. They married in 1923. Despite misgivings about her husband's decision to move to the Soviet Union, she settled there with him in 1936. They separated in 1941. In 1948, their marriage was ruled null and void, a verdict that was upheld in 1958 by the Supreme Court of the USSR. Her stage name was Lina Llubera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mira Mendelson</span> Soviet writer (1915–1968)

Mariya-Cecilia Abramovna Mendelson-Prokofieva, typically referred to as Mira Mendelson, was a Russian poet, writer, and translator who was the second wife of the composer Sergei Prokofiev. She was the co-librettist of her husband's operas Betrothal in a Monastery, The Story of a Real Man, and War and Peace, as well as the ballet The Tale of the Stone Flower.

<i>On Guard for Peace</i> 1950 oratorio by Sergei Prokofiev

On Guard for Peace, also translated as On Guard of Peace, Op. 124 is an oratorio by Sergei Prokofiev scored for narrators, mezzo-soprano, boy soprano, boys choir, mixed choir, and symphony orchestra. Each of its ten movements sets texts by Samuil Marshak, who had collaborated previously with the composer in the work Winter Bonfire, Op. 122.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symphony for Strings</span> 1940 symphony by Georgy Sviridov

The Symphony for Strings, Op. 14 is a four-movement composition for string orchestra by Georgy Sviridov. He composed the work during a period of creative crisis, when he began to reject the works of Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich, and struggled to develop his own style. The work was premiered in December 28, 1941, by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eduard Grikurov. The work immediately engendered intense debate, against and in defense of Sviridov, among members of the Union of Soviet Composers. After 1943, the Symphony for Strings was not performed again until the composer rediscovered the score among his personal papers in the 1980s, after which he unsuccessfully attempted to revise it. Its first modern performance occurred on June 28, 2000, in Saint Petersburg, with the Moscow Soloists conducted by Yuri Bashmet.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Morrison 2009, pp. 289–290.
  2. Jaffé 1998, p. 193.
  3. Guillaumier, Christina (2020). The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev. Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press. p. 239. ISBN   978-1-78327-448-2.
  4. 1 2 3 Nestyev 1960, p. 399.
  5. Morrison 2008, pp. 238–239.
  6. 1 2 Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 319.
  7. Morrison 2009, p. 289.
  8. 1 2 3 Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 320.
  9. Nice, David (November 2021). "Prokofieff: Work List" (PDF). Boosey & Hawkes . p. 128. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 24, 2023. Retrieved April 24, 2023.
  10. Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, pp. 319–320.
  11. Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 322.
  12. Nestyev 1960, p. 398.
  13. 1 2 Nestyev 1960, p. 401.
  14. "Prokofiev Sixth Symphony Acclaimed in Russia". Pomona Progress Bulletin. United Press International. November 21, 1947. p. 9. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2023 via Newspapers.com.
  15. Jaffé 1998, p. 199.
  16. Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 327.
  17. 1 2 Morrison 2009, p. 291.
  18. Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 321.
  19. Morrison 2009, p. 294.
  20. Jaffé 1998, p. 201.
  21. Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 358.
  22. Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 356.
  23. McAllister & Guillaumier 2020, p. 120.
  24. Nestyev 1960, pp. 399, 401.
  25. Mendelson-Prokofieva 2012, p. 399.
  26. Khachaturian, Aram (1957). "A Few Thoughts About Prokofiev". In Schlifstein, Semyon (ed.). Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. p. 199.
  27. McAllister & Guillaumier 2020, p. 55.
  28. "Prokofieff Work Premiered by New York Philharmonic". Montreal Gazette . December 3, 1949. p. 26. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2023 via Newspapers.com.
  29. Morrison 2008, pp. 370–371.
  30. Affelder, Paul (November 25, 1949). "Music: Three Firsts Enliven Philharmonic-Symphony Concert; Met Revives 'Manon Lescaut'". Brooklyn Eagle . p. 18. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2023 via Newspapers.com.
  31. Havener, Helen (December 4, 1949). "Concert Notes". Portland Press Herald . p. 69. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2023 via Newspapers.com.
  32. Gross, Ben (December 1, 1949). "Looking & Listening". New York Daily News . p. 70. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2023 via Newspapers.com.
  33. Samuel, Claude (1961). Prokofiev (1971 ed.). New York City: Grossman Publishers. p. 151.
  34. M., D. (Spring 1953). "Serge Prokofieff (1891–1953)". Tempo. 27 (27): 5. JSTOR   943445 via JSTOR.
  35. Hopkins, G. W. (Spring 1970). "Record Guide". Tempo. 92 (92): 37–40. doi:10.1017/S0040298200025432. JSTOR   943185 via JSTOR.

Cited sources