Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (; ; 23 April 1891 – 5 March 1953 ) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century.

In 1902, Prokofiev's mother met Sergei Taneyev, director of the Moscow Conservatory, who initially suggested that Prokofiev should start lessons in piano and composition with Alexander Goldenweiser.

They were introduced to composer Alexander Glazunov, a professor at the Conservatory, who asked to see Prokofiev and his music ; Glazunov was so impressed that he urged Prokofiev's mother that her son apply to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.

Diaghilev then commissioned Prokofiev to compose the ballet Chout ( The Fool, the original Russian-language full title was Сказка про шута, семерых шутов перешутившего ( Skazka pro shuta, semerykh shutov pereshutivshavo ), meaning " The Tale of the Buffoon who Outwits Seven Other Buffoons ").

Russian composers who reached a high status in the world of music include Igor Stravinsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Moreover, Sergei Prokofiev ( 1891 – 1953 ) was a consistent enumerator who assigned an opus number to a composition before composing it ; at his death he left fragmentary and planned — but numbered — works.

The soundtrack for the film was written by Sergei Prokofiev, who also reworked the score into a concert cantata.

Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

During these years, he worked with major composers, such as Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie and Ravel, and artists who designed sets and costumes, such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, and Henri Matisse, creating new works that combined all the arts.

Gustav Mahler, Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Scott Joplin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin and George Gershwin are amongst the composers who have had their performances recorded in this way.

) The film's score was composed by Sergei Prokofiev, who later reworked the score into a concert cantata.

After Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva returned from Gulag, the Composers ' Union did nothing to improve the extremely bad living conditions of her family ; it was the prominent singers Irina Arkhipova and Zurab Sotkilava who protected Prokofiev ’ s first family.

2, which was dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev, who had died that year.

* “ During this season I hope to acquaint as wide an audience as possible with the new production at the Mariinsky Theater of ‘ Dead Souls .’ This is Rodion Shchedrin ’ s great opera and, incidentally, I am not the only person who ranks this work along with Prokofiev ’ s “ War and Peace ” and Shostakovich ’ s “ Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District .” From the first minute we see ourselves in Gogol ’ s characters, how we live, how frightful we are, and how we have become so.

The unprecedented migration of European knowledge and culture that swept from East to West during the first decades of the 20th Century included figures such as Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, great composers who were the product of the renowned Russian system of music education.

Prokofiev dedicated it to Mstislav Rostropovich, who premiered it on February 18, 1952 with Sviatoslav Richter conducting ( the only instance of Richter conducting ).

The senior Chaliapin used this as his world base, like other emigres and members of their families who often ended up living in the United States such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff and, for a while, Sergei Prokofiev.

Alongside the many notable dancers, during this period she encountered a number of leading 20th century figures who created work for the company including the artists Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, composers including Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev and a number of leading choreographers including Léonide Massine, George Balanchine, and Bronislava Nijinska.

Based on a synopsis created by Adrian Piotrovsky ( who first suggested the subject to Prokofiev ) and Sergey Radlov, the ballet in its original form was completed by Prokofiev in September 1935, on commission by the Kirov Ballet, since when he first presented the music to the Bolshoi Ballet that year, they claimed it was " undanceable ".

As one of the most revered groups during the Communist era, the quartet performed at the funerals of both Joseph Stalin and Sergei Prokofiev, who both died on the same day in 1953.

Prokofiev, who had wanted to see his masterpiece staged as quickly as possible, added marches, choruses, and other materials to Part 2 to satisfy the committee.

The work is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April 1913 after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev.

Prokofiev biographer, David Nice, noted in 2011: " A decade ago I ’ d have bet you there were only a dozen pianists in the world who could play Prokofiev ’ s Second Piano Concerto properly.

After the Revolution, Prokofiev left Russia with the official blessing of the Soviet minister Anatoly Lunacharsky, and he lived in the United States, then Germany, then Paris, during which time he married a Spanish singer, Carolina (' Lina ') Codina, with whom he had two sons.

When decades later Prokofiev wrote about his lessons with Glière, he gave due credit to Glière's sympathetic qualities as a teacher but complained that Glière had introduced him to " square " phrase structure and conventional modulations which he subsequently had to unlearn.

By this point Prokofiev had composed two more operas, Desert Islands and The Feast during the Plague, and was working on his fourth, Undine.

During this period he studied under, among others, Alexander Winkler, Anatoly Lyadov, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov ( though when Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908, Prokofiev noted that he had only studied orchestration with him ' after a fashion ' – that is, he was just one of many students in a heavily attended class — and regretted that he otherwise ' never had the opportunity to study with him ').

Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev ; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario.

This was his own name for the symphony, which was written in the style that, according to Prokofiev, Joseph Haydn would have used if he had been alive at the time.

" Forced to adapt to the new circumstances ( whatever misgivings he had about them in private ), Prokofiev wrote a series of " mass songs " ( Opp.

At the same time Prokofiev also composed music for children ( Three Songs for Children and Peter and the Wolf, among others ) as well as the gigantic Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, which was banned from performance and had to wait until May 1966 for a partial premiere.

Although the film had a very poor sound recording, Prokofiev adapted much of his score into a large-scale cantata for mezzo-soprano, orchestra and chorus, which was extensively performed and recorded.

Biographer Daniel Jaffé argued that Prokofiev, " having forced himself to compose a cheerful evocation of the nirvana Stalin wanted everyone to believe he had created " ( i. e. in Zdravitsa ) then subsequently, in these three sonatas, " expressed his true feelings ".

" Ironically ( because, it appears, no one had noticed his allusion ) Sonata No. 7 received a Stalin Prize ( Second Class ), and No. 8 a Stalin Prize First Class, even though the works have been subsequently interpreted as representing Prokofiev " venting his anger and frustration with the Soviet regime.

Prokofiev had been considering making an opera out of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace, when news of the German invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941 made the subject seem all the more timely.

By this time his relationship with the 25-year-old writer Mira Mendelson ( 1915 – 1968 ) had finally led to his separation from his wife Lina, although they were never technically divorced: indeed Prokofiev had tried to persuade Lina and their sons to accompany him as evacuees out of Moscow, but Lina opted to stay.

Prokofiev had time to write his postwar Sixth Symphony and a ninth piano sonata ( for Sviatoslav Richter ) before the Party, as part of the so-called " Zhdanov Decree ", suddenly changed its opinion about his music.

The Orchestra has also had many distinguished guest conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Edward Elgar, Morton Gould, Walter Hendl, Erich Kunzel, Erich Leinsdorf, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, André Previn, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg, Leonard Slatkin, Leopold Stokowski, Richard Strauss, George Szell, Michael Tilson Thomas, Bruno Walter, and John Williams.

" Scriabin had a major impact on the music world over time, and influenced composers like Roy Agnew, Nikolai Roslavets, Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, although Scriabin was reported to have disliked the last two.

This first half was presented as a musical, with adapted music from Lieutenant Kijé and other Prokofiev works which had special English lyrics fitted into them.

Koussevitsky had been discussing a commission for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Prokofiev in 1929.