Sergey Prokofiev: Diaries 1907-1914: Prodigious Youth

Description

Prokofiev, a compulsive diarist, gifted and idiosyncratic writer, possessed anincorrigibly sardonic curiosity about individuals and events. When he leftRussia following the 1917 Revolution, his diaries were recovered from thefamily flat in Petrograd, and Prokofiev smuggled them out of the country afterhis first return to the Soviet Union in 1927. The later diaries, written inthe West, were brought back by legal decree after the composer's death, tobe kept in a special, closed section of the Russian State Archive. EventuallyProkofiev's son Svyatoslav was allowed to copy the voluminous contents;when he and his son Serge Jr moved to Paris they undertook the gigantic taskof reproducing the partially encoded manuscript in an intelligible form. Volume I covers the bulk of Prokofiev's years at the St Petersburg Conservatoire,ending with his triumphant graduation. Simultaneously attached to andexasperated by the traditions exemplified at this time by such famous men as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Lyadov and Tcherepnin, the relentlessly brashyoung genius relishes the power of his talent to irritate, challenge and finallyovercome the establishment, alongside unusually candid revelations of the all-too-normal preoccupations of a young man flexing his muscles in society. Taken as a whole, the diaries represent an inexhaustibly rich portrait of oneof the most vibrant periods in the whole of Western art, peopled by virtuallyevery musician and artist of note. They constitute both an indispensable andan entertaining source of reference for all scholars and lovers of Prokofiev'smusic.

Anthony Phillips learnt Russian in the "Secret Classrooms" of National Service in the 1950s andlater at Oxford. The language continued to play an important part during his later career in musicadministration, during which he became general manager of London's Royal Festival Hall. Story of aFriendship, his translation of Shostakovich's letters to Isaak Glikman, was published by Faber in2000, and Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters (with Rosamund Bartlett) byPenguin Classics in 2004.

'A fascinating record for posterity.' - Irish Times 'This extraordinary achievement . . . Phillip's enthusiasm, tact and sympathy,not to mention his wide knowledge of music and history, haveproduced a work that everyone interested in music and Russian culture ofthe past hundred years should read.', Gerald McBurney, New Statesman