Sergey Prokofiev: Diaries 1907-1914: Prodigious Youth

Prokofiev, a gifted and idiosyncratic writer, left Russia following the 1917 Revolution, and his diaries were recovered from the family flat in Petrograd. They were smuggled out of the country and later returned by legal decree. The diaries provide a rich portrait of one of the most vibrant periods in Western art, and are an indispensable and entertaining source of reference for scholars and lovers of Prokofiev's music.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 872 pages
Publication date: 06 October 2022
Publisher: Faber & Faber

Prokofiev, a passionate diarist, was a gifted and unique writer with an insatiable sardonic curiosity about people and events. After leaving Russia following the 1917 Revolution, his diaries were recovered from his family's flat in Petrograd and smuggled out of the country upon his first return to the Soviet Union in 1927. The later diaries, written in the West, were legally returned after the composer's death and are now preserved in a special, closed section of the Russian State Archive. Eventually, Prokofiev's son Svyatoslav was permitted to copy the voluminous contents, and when he and his son Serge Jr moved to Paris, they embarked on the monumental task of reproducing the partially encoded manuscript in a comprehensible form.

Volume I spans the majority of Prokofiev's years at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, culminating in his triumphant graduation. At the same time, he was both attached to and frustrated by the traditions exemplified by renowned musicians such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Lyadov, and Tcherepnin. The young genius relished the power of his talent to irritate, challenge, and ultimately overcome the establishment, alongside unusually candid revelations of the ordinary preoccupations of a young man asserting himself in society.

When viewed as a whole, the diaries provide an exhaustive portrait of one of the most vibrant periods in Western art, populated by virtually every musician and artist of note. They serve as an indispensable and entertaining source of reference for all scholars and enthusiasts of Prokofiev's music.

Weight: 1115g
Dimension: 234 x 153 x 41 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780571380916
Edition number: Main