This Week in Classical Music: May 18, 2026. Prokofiev, Part IV. We finished our previous post with Prokofiev, his Spanish wife, and two sons arriving in Moscow in the summer of 1936. A shrewd man, Prokofiev should’ve known how dangerous it was, if not to him, then to his wife, who eventually ended up in the Gulag, serving eight years, but that didn’t stop him. Did he move back because he knew that his only real competitor, Dmitry Shostakovich, was silenced by the vicious criticism of the official press? We’ll never know, but we remember his problems with Rachmaninov in the US and Stravinsky in France.
Prokofiev got plugged into the musical life of the Soviet Union instantly; it was as if he had lived there all his life. He wrote music to commemorate Pushkin’s 100th death anniversary, as was requisite in the midst of the national celebrations, pieces for children (one very successful, Peter and the Wolf, for a children’s theater), and a 10-part Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, with texts from the works by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The latter wasn’t politically successful, as his music was judged “incomprehensible.” It was also just not very good. In 1939, Prokofiev followed the Cantata with Zdravitsa (Toast, or Hail), composed for Stalin’s approaching 60th birthday, a nauseating piece, but with streaks of Prokofiev’s talent. The text was purported to be “folkloric,” but was actually written by Kremlin's hacks. Prokofiev followed that with another Socialist Realist piece, the opera “Semyon Kotko,” which also failed to satisfy the Soviet critics. Till about 1940, or for the first four years of his life in the USSR, all his music was political, except for Romeo and Juliet and the first Cello sonata, both of which he started writing while still in France.
In 1941, as the Germans approached Moscow, he evacuated to safer areas, first to Georgia, then to Kazakhstan (Stalin moved to Kuibyshev). During that time, Prokofiev wrote several chamber and instrumental pieces, some of the best of his Soviet output: the three so-called “War sonatas” for the piano, nos. 6 through 8 (he premiered no. 6, Sviatoslav Richter played the first performance of no. 7, and Emil Gilels of no. 8). The Violin sonata no 1, premiered by David Oistrach, was also composed during that time. Of the large pieces, it was the ballet Cinderella, the music to Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible, and the Fifth Symphony, probably his best.
Prokofiev’s relationship with his wife, Lina Llubera, had been failing for years, as he was involved with the young translator and librettist Mira Mendelson. He moved in with Mendelson in 1941, while still formally married to Lina, who wouldn’t give him a divorce. Artistically, though, things seemed to go well. Then, in February of 1948, two things happened: Andrei Zdanov, one of Stalin’s closest subordinates and the Soviet Union's chief propagandist, called a conference in the Kremlin where he scolded Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturian as “formalists.” Zhdanov’s criticism wasn’t just words: at best, it could lead to a ban on one’s work, but things could get much worse; everybody remembers what happened to hundreds of cultural figures in the 1930s, who were criticized first and then disappeared in the Gulag or were shot outright. Zhdanov’s criticism affected Prokofiev the way the 1936 Pravda articles affected Shoskatkovich, but deeper: the young Shostakovich eventually recovered; Prokofiev, who was already in poor health, never did. He wrote a letter of self-criticism, repenting of his “formalism.” The self-flagellation didn’t stop the officials from banning many of his works. And then, that same month, Lina was arrested and sent to the Gulag for 20 years, and even though they had not lived together in years, the arrest deeply affected Prokofiev. He was only 53 in 1948, but from that point on, Prokofiev did not compose a single successful piece. He worked on revisions to his opera War and Peace and several other pieces, none of them significant. He suffered from terrible headaches and had several heart attacks. As his works weren’t performed in public, he had very little money. He died on the same day as Stalin, on March 5th of 1953, but his death went largely unnoticed; only several weeks later, there appeared a short obit at the back of a musical journal: the rest of the publication was dedicated to Stalin’s death.
Here’s Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata no. 8; it’s performed by the same pianist who premiered it in 1944, Emil Gilels. This recording was made 30 years later.
Prokofiev, Part IV, 2026
This Week in Classical Music: May 18, 2026. Prokofiev, Part IV. We finished our previous post with Prokofiev, his Spanish wife, and two sons arriving in Moscow in the summer of 1936..jpg "Sergey Prokofiev, by Konchalovsky")
A shrewd man, Prokofiev should’ve known how dangerous it was, if not to him, then to his wife, who eventually ended up in the Gulag, serving eight years, but that didn’t stop him. Did he move back because he knew that his only real competitor, Dmitry Shostakovich, was silenced by the vicious criticism of the official press? We’ll never know, but we remember his problems with Rachmaninov in the US and Stravinsky in France.
Prokofiev got plugged into the musical life of the Soviet Union instantly; it was as if he had lived there all his life. He wrote music to commemorate Pushkin’s 100th death anniversary, as was requisite in the midst of the national celebrations, pieces for children (one very successful, Peter and the Wolf, for a children’s theater), and a 10-part Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, with texts from the works by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The latter wasn’t politically successful, as his music was judged “incomprehensible.” It was also just not very good. In 1939, Prokofiev followed the Cantata with Zdravitsa (Toast, or Hail), composed for Stalin’s approaching 60th birthday, a nauseating piece, but with streaks of Prokofiev’s talent. The text was purported to be “folkloric,” but was actually written by Kremlin's hacks. Prokofiev followed that with another Socialist Realist piece, the opera “Semyon Kotko,” which also failed to satisfy the Soviet critics. Till about 1940, or for the first four years of his life in the USSR, all his music was political, except for Romeo and Juliet and the first Cello sonata, both of which he started writing while still in France.
In 1941, as the Germans approached Moscow, he evacuated to safer areas, first to Georgia, then to Kazakhstan (Stalin moved to Kuibyshev). During that time, Prokofiev wrote several chamber and instrumental pieces, some of the best of his Soviet output: the three so-called “War sonatas” for the piano, nos. 6 through 8 (he premiered no. 6, Sviatoslav Richter played the first performance of no. 7, and Emil Gilels of no. 8). The Violin sonata no 1, premiered by David Oistrach, was also composed during that time. Of the large pieces, it was the ballet Cinderella, the music to Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible, and the Fifth Symphony, probably his best.
Prokofiev’s relationship with his wife, Lina Llubera, had been failing for years, as he was involved with the young translator and librettist Mira Mendelson. He moved in with Mendelson in 1941, while still formally married to Lina, who wouldn’t give him a divorce. Artistically, though, things seemed to go well. Then, in February of 1948, two things happened: Andrei Zdanov, one of Stalin’s closest subordinates and the Soviet Union's chief propagandist, called a conference in the Kremlin where he scolded Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturian as “formalists.” Zhdanov’s criticism wasn’t just words: at best, it could lead to a ban on one’s work, but things could get much worse; everybody remembers what happened to hundreds of cultural figures in the 1930s, who were criticized first and then disappeared in the Gulag or were shot outright. Zhdanov’s criticism affected Prokofiev the way the 1936 Pravda articles affected Shoskatkovich, but deeper: the young Shostakovich eventually recovered; Prokofiev, who was already in poor health, never did. He wrote a letter of self-criticism, repenting of his “formalism.” The self-flagellation didn’t stop the officials from banning many of his works. And then, that same month, Lina was arrested and sent to the Gulag for 20 years, and even though they had not lived together in years, the arrest deeply affected Prokofiev. He was only 53 in 1948, but from that point on, Prokofiev did not compose a single successful piece. He worked on revisions to his opera War and Peace and several other pieces, none of them significant. He suffered from terrible headaches and had several heart attacks. As his works weren’t performed in public, he had very little money. He died on the same day as Stalin, on March 5th of 1953, but his death went largely unnoticed; only several weeks later, there appeared a short obit at the back of a musical journal: the rest of the publication was dedicated to Stalin’s death.
Here’s Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata no. 8; it’s performed by the same pianist who premiered it in 1944, Emil Gilels. This recording was made 30 years later.