Prokofiev: A Biography: From Russia to the West 1891-1935

An assessment of the life and work of renowned composer, Sergey Prokofiev, in which David Nice draws on a range of sources. The text follows Prokofiev's personal and musical progression from his childhood on a Ukrainian country estate to the years he spent travelling in America and Europe as an acclaimed interpreter of his own works. Nice sheds light on Prokofiev's early years at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, his departure from Russia in 1918 for what he thought would be a short tour of America, and his marriage and family relationships. He considers the music of Prokofiev's years in the West (long dismissed by Soviet musicologists as decadent work weakened by the composer's absence from the motherland), moving from the lyricism of his St Petersburg years to the fresh simplicity of his early Soviet scores. Nice also examines the complex reasons which led Prokofiev to move his family to the Soviet Union in 1936.