Five marginally-connected thoughts on Sergei Prokofiev

If this wasn’t an ill-conceived press photo at the time it was taken, it surely set the stage for those that came generations later.

On Saturday night the first words out of my mouth after the final note of the excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev’s epic ballet Romeo and Juliet had sounded were “Jesus Christ.” Guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto had led our fine local band through a concert that was, to me, a tale of two halves. The opening half was OK – a decent performance of Silvestre Revueltas’ Redes suite and a pleasant though perhaps character-deficient reading of the beautiful Concierto de Aranjuez – but the return from intermission brought with it a deadly combination of music and players that were made for each other. Prieto’s conducting was straightforward and wonderfully uncomplicated, the band’s greatest strengths were highlighted, and, most importantly, Prokofiev is really good at music.

It’s that last one that got me thinking as the rest of the weekend wore on. It had been awhile since I had listened to Prokofiev, and it had been even longer since I had heard his music in concert (in fact, it was probably the concert here a few years ago when Gil Shaham played the second concerto). As I was reminded of just how much of a bad ass he is, I thought it might be appropriate to share the five recurring thoughts that have been kicking around the infinite void that is my brain.

Something cool you might have missed: The Meeting of the Volga and the Don

Much of the history of the twentieth century is some variation on the idea of exile, occasionally self-imposed. Music’s portion of that history is filled with musicians and composers who fled the Nazis or the Communists for safer environs. But there was a small subset of prominent musicians who remained firmly entrenched in the cultural life of these regimes, and they are often the figures that are the subject of some controversy (the obvious archetype being Wilhelm Furtwangler). Sergei Prokofiev was one such figure.

10 Best: Symphonies no. 5

A few years ago, some friends and I devised an NCAA-style bracket tournament to determine the greatest composer of all-time through a rigorous series of discussions.  The overwhelming majority of humans would likely declare that arguing over who was better/more important between Ravel and Schoenberg is a pointless waste of time.  Just because they’re correct doesn’t mean it still can’t have benefits; talking about music, no matter how unusually, is far from pointless.

It is with that same general spirit in mind that I invite you into my world of randomly ranking things like best symphonies based solely on their number. It probably seems like a ridiculous idea, and it is, but it still gets you thinking about great music, and ultimately that’s good.  Read this and think about it.  Even better, listen to the music and rate for yourself.  Think of me as a cult leader and classical music as the cyanide Kool-Aid.  Do it now.