This Week in Classical Music: April 27, 2026.  Prokofiev, Part II.  Prokofiev was 27 when he arrived in New York in September of 1918.  Back in Russia, he was acknowledged as an exceptionally talented young composer and virtuoso pianist (see our first entry for details), but things were very different in America.  Prokofiev wasn’t that well-known in the US, but even more importantly, there was already an exceptionally talented composer and supreme virtuoso pianist, also an emigre from Russia: Sergei Rachmaninov.  Rachmaninov was 18 years older and much better established: he toured the US in 1909-10 with his then-new Third Piano Concerto to great success.  Even though he emigrated to the US at about the same time as Prokofiev, Rachmaninov played 60-70 concerts a year.  Prokofiev played just a few, and then became involved in composing a new opera, The Love for Three Oranges, commissioned by the Chicago Opera Association, which took time from his concert activities.  Things got worse in December of 1919 with the unexpected death of Cleofonte Campanini, the conductor for the Association, who spearheaded the commission.  The completed opera had to wait for its premiere till December 1921 (it took place at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater).  In the meantime, concert engagements were few. 

As his American career was going nowhere, Prokofiev’s thoughts turned to Europe.  In April of 1920, he left the US for Paris.  There, he renewed his relationship with Diaghilev and his company, Ballets Russes.  For him, Prokofiev reworked his 1915 ballet, Chout (Jester).  He also completed his Third Piano Concerto and several piano pieces.  He took time to go to Chicago to conduct the premiere performance of The Love for Three Oranges, which wasn’t very successful.   

Igor Stravinsky was also living in Paris during that time.  He was better known than Prokofiev; his music, scandalous in prior years, became popular, and he had a very special relationship with Diaghilev, for whom he wrote several ballets, including The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.  In one episode, Stravinsky was in the audience during the presentation of Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, requested by Diaghilev, and made snide remarks about the music, which almost led to a fistfight between the two composers. Their relationship remained strained for several years.  Stravinsky became as much a thorn in Prokofiev’s side in Europe as Rachmaninov was in the US.  Well established and supremely talented, Stravinsky eclipsed Prokofiev at every turn.  He was a reason Prokofiev made some fateful (one might say catastrophic) decisions several years later.  In the meantime, Prokofiev moved to Ettal, Bavaria, to work on another opera, The Fiery Angel.  In 1923, he married a Spanish singer, Lina Llubera, and moved back to Paris with her.  There, he managed to improve his relationship with Stravinsky, even though they continued to differ musically in many ways.  Stravinsky even acknowledged Prokofiev as the greatest living Russian composer – after himself, of course. 

We should consider, for a moment, the tremendously vibrant musical atmosphere of Paris in those days, the mid- to late-1920s.  Ravel was in his prime; Fauré and Satie had just passed away; Poulenc, Milhaud, Auric, Honegger, and the rest of Les Six were on the way up; Tcherepnin, Martinů and several other Eastern Europeans were also working there, as were several young Americans.  As such, Prokofiev had a lot of competition to contend with, but for him, there was only one who counted: Stravinsky. 

 During this period, Prokofiev maintained his connections to the musical world of Soviet Russia.  Several premieres were performed in Moscow and Leningrad, and he planned а tour there.  How those connections developed, and what they evolved into, we’ll talk about next week.  In the meantime, here’s a piece from his time in Ettal, the 1923 version of the Piano Sonata no. 5.  Prokofiev revised it in the last years of his life as op. 135.  Boris Berman is the pianist. 

This Week in Classical Music: April 20, 2026.  Prokofiev, Part I.  Sergey Prokofiev, one of the most interesting composers of the 20^th century (and a wonderful pianist as well), was born on April 23^rd (new style) of 1891, in the village of Sontsovka near Donetsk in today’s Ukraine, then the Russian Empire.  Let us note that in January of 2025, Sontsovka was again captured by Russia, as it is waging war against Ukraine.  What happened to Prokofiev’s museum, we don’t know.  The nearby towns Prokofiev mentions in his autobiography – Bakhmut, Konstantinovka – were all raised to the ground during this war. 

Prokofiev lived through some of the most terrible and consequential events of the century, as did many Russian and European composers during those years.  Those events, taken together with some questionable decisions he had made under often-challenging circumstances, affected him more than many others (of course, we remember and do not compare it to the tragic fate of the Jewish composers killed during the Holocaust).  These events divided his life into several phases, all different, and all tied to particular places: Imperial Russia, the US, Europe, and then Stalin’s Soviet Union.  The first thirteen (and for all we know, happy) years of Prokofiev’s life were spent in Sontsovka; his mother was a good pianist and became his first teacher.  He started composing at the age of six, and at nine, after visiting Moscow and attending several performances of opera and Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty,” wrote his own opera, “The Giant.”  Taneyev heard parts of it and was impressed; he even convinced his student, the young, gifted composer Reinhold Glière, to go to Sontsovka and teach the boy, which Glière did, for two summers.  In 1904, Sergey was sent to St. Petersburg and entered the conservatory, where he studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov and the piano with Yesipova.  While at the conservatory, he met Rakhmaninov and Stravinsky, both of whom he’d later consider his rivals.  He graduated with a gold medal, performing his own First Piano Concerto at the examination. 

Till 1918, Prokofiev lived in Russia, with some visits to Paris, where he met Diaghilev.  During that period, he composed his Second Piano Concerto (technically challenging and considered controversial at the time), the First (“Classical”) Symphony, and the scandalous, though by now quite tame, Scythian Suite, inspired by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  He also wrote two piano cycles, Sarcasms and Visions fugitives.  In Russia, he became famous and was feted as one of the best pianists and a talented, if audacious, composer.  In 1914, Russia entered the Great War, and in 1917, it sustained two revolutions, one in February and another, catastrophic, in October, which brought Lenin’s Bolsheviks to power.  Prokofiev had considered emigration as early as the end of 1917, and in May of 1918, he boarded the Trans-Siberian train to the far East of Russia, took a boat to Japan, and from there made it to New York, arriving there in September of 1918. 

Here, from the Russian period of Prokofiev’s life, is his Piano Concerto no. 1, from 1912.  Prokofiev soloed at the premiere; he was then 21.  In this recording, made live in September of 1993, the pianist is Evgeny Kissin, who was then also 21.  Claudio Abbado conducts the Berlin Philharmonic. 

We’ll continue with the American and European phases of Prokofiev’s life next week. 

This Week in Classical Music: April 13, 2026.  Pianists, and a bit of Italy.  Before we turn to the main topic of our post, here’s a harp.  It’s not just any harp; it’s displayed in the Galleria Estense, Modena’s Art Museum.  This harp was brought to Modena in 1598, when the Estense court, under pressure from the Pope, moved there from their original family seat of Ferrara.  While in Ferrara, this harp was used by one of the members of the Concerto delle Donne.  We don’t know who played this instrument: all members of the Concerto were virtuoso singers, and several used the harp, lute, and viol for accompaniment.  The Concerto didn’t survive the move to Modena, but the precious harp did; it really is very beautiful, worthy of a ducal court. 

Four pianists were born this week: Artur Schnabel, on April 17^th of 1882, Murray Perahia, on April 19^th of 1947, Grigory Sokolov, on April 18^th of 1950, and Mikhail Pletnev, on April 14^th of 1957.  Schnabel, of course, was one of the most important pianists of the 20^th century.  He was born in Lipnik, then Austria-Hungary, now Poland, and moved to Vienna when he was seven.  There, he studied with the famous Leschetizky, who valued the musicianship of the boy and told him to play Schubert’s sonatas rather than Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies.  In 1900, Schnabel moved to Berlin, where he lived till 1933, when the Nazis came to power (Schnabel was Jewish).  In Germany, he was considered the greatest pianist, and his recitals of Schubert and Beethoven sonatas were legendary.  He also played chamber music with the best musicians of his generation: the cellists Pablo Casals, Emanuel Feuermann, and Pierre Fournier, with the violist William Primrose and Paul Hindemith, the composer who was also an excellent violist, and the violinists Huberman and Szigeti.  He also performed with the best conductors: Furtwängler, Walter, Klemperer, and Szell.  Schnabel was the first pianist to record all of Beethoven’s sonatas; he did so in 1932-34.  There are some technical issues, some were Schnabel’s, an excellent pianist but not a virtuoso on the level with Horowitz or Josef Hofmann, and some were issues of the recordings themselves; still, they are very interesting to listen to.  Here, from this set, is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 21, the Waldstein. 

Grigory Sokolov was born in Leningrad (in 1991, the city reverted to its original name, St. Petersburg) and won, unexpectedly, a Tchaikovsky Piano Competition at the age of 16, still a 9^th-grader at a special music school (Misha Dichter was the public’s favorite).  Mikhail Pletnev was born in Arkhangelsk, then moved to Moscow, and won a Tchaikovsky Piano Competition at the age of 21.  After his initial success, Sokolov’s career developed slowly; he reached the peak of his career in the 1990s and is now considered one of the greatest pianists of the generation.  For the last 20-plus years, he has been playing only in recitals and never with orchestras; he doesn’t record in studios (though permits recordings of his live concerts), and refuses to play in the US and the UK because of visa requirements.  Pletnev has two parallel careers: one, as a very successful concert pianist; another, as a conductor: in 1990, he founded the Russian National Orchestra, the first Russian orchestra not sponsored by the state, and led it till 2022, when, after making a statement critical of Russia’s war against Ukraine, he was forced out. 

This Week in Classical Music: April 6, 2026.  Venice, La Fenice, Kissin.  What could be better than a recital by one of the greatest pianists, played in a gorgeous old theater in one of the most beautiful cities in the world?  Or, rather, what could go wrong?  As it turns out, some things can.  First, the venue.  La Fenice is a small but exceptionally beautiful theater (if not the neo-classical façade, then definitely the interior).  It was built in 1792 and named La Fenice, or The Phoenix, after the immortal bird of Greek legend that rises to new life from the ashes: the company that owned the theater previously lost three buildings to fire.  Unfortunately, the name proved prophetic, as La Fenice burned to the ground on two occasions, in 1836 and, recently, in 1996.   Both times it was restored, after the first time within just one year, while in modern times, it took the bureaucratic state seven times longer.  Still, the job was done well, and La Fenice gleams in its 19^th-century beauty.  It’s a relatively small theater, with a tiny main floor, which becomes even smaller when several front rows are removed for the concert stage.  On the other hand, it’s tall, with five circles of boxes, all identical except for the Royal Box.  For a piano recital, this creates an acoustic problem, as there are no panels above the stage to reflect sound into the hall.  It’s especially evident in the boxes, which, by the way, are bare: boxes, quite literally.  Even in the ones close to the stage, the sound felt distant.  Kissin, who started his program with Beethoven’s early Piano Sonata no. 7, exacerbated the problem by minimally using the pedal.  We understand his intent, and in a different hall, it might have worked, but in La Fenice, without the pedal, the sound was dry and failed to project.  We even thought it might have been a problem with the instrument: Kissin was playing a Steinway with the Zanta logo under the maker’s name.  Zanta, an Italian company, makes its own pianos, but it seems in this case it was a standard Steinway D-274.

We thought that Beethoven's sonata, with its exaggerated accents and very slow 2^nd and 3^rd movements, was not very successful.  The five mazurkas by Chopin that followed fared better, even though they were also rather austere.   Schumann’s Kreisleriana, which started the second half, was the best.  Rambling and longish, it’s not an easy piece to pull together, but Kissin managed it very well.  The concluding Hungarian Rhapsody no 12, even if a rather unusual choice for such a cerebral concert, was brilliant, demonstrating Kissin’s amazing technical abilities.

But we would be the first to admit that all these comments are somewhat nitpicking.  Kissin is a tremendous musician and a phenomenal pianist, whether one agrees with his interpretations or not.  La Fenice is beautiful, and Venice is magical.  You leave the theater and step into one of the most beautiful places, and a glass of good Italian wine helps bring a great evening to an end.

This Week in Classical Music: March 30, 2026.  Bologna, Ferrara (and Modena).  Historically, Bologna, with its numerous churches and a very old university, was one of the most musical cities in Italy.  It had a fine violin school – makers, players, and composers (Corelli, Torelli and Vitali were part of it).  Starting in the early 17^th century, numerous literary and artistic Academies were established, some, like Accademia dei Floridi, dedicated to music (Monteverdi and Merula were members).  In 1660, the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna was founded, with academicians divided into orders: the composers, instrumentalists, and singers (Mozart, whila in Italy, submitted a composition for examination there).  The Academy continued into the 19^th and 20^th centuries, presenting important concerts and composers. 

As early as the 15^th and 16^th centuries, Ferrara (and after 1598, Modena, where the d’Este court relocated when the pope took over their seat of power) was one of the most important musical centers in Italy.  We’ve written about Ferrara’s Concerto delle donne, and will return to the musical tradition in that city in a later post (Modena deserves a separate entry). 

This Week in Classical Music: March 23, 2026.  Venice.  In the 17^th-18^th centuries, Venice was the epicenter of the opera world.  The first public opera theater, Teatro San Cassiano, opened there in 1637, and a year later, the second one, Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, was built.  By the end of the 17^th century, Venice had about six working opera houses, give or take: fires were common and were the main cause for theaters closing, and new ones were built.  Today, Venice has two: the famous La Fenice, built in 1792, and a much older Teatro Malibran.  Named after the great soprano sfogato, it was inaugurated in 1678 and, for a while, was the largest theater in Venice.  La Fenice burned to the ground three times: in 1774, 1856, and in 1996 (it was reopened in its current form in 2004).  These days, operas are not staged in Venice as often as one would hope, but a visit to La Fenice is inspiring, so, instead of an opera, we heard a recital given by Evgeny Kissin.  A short review will follow soon.