Tag: Sergei Prokofiev

When I was in college, I was a Prokofiev nut. To the point that I would say he was probably my favorite composer. I was astonished by his melodic fecundity, and his language was just modern enough to lend a little tang.

And thanks to my love of film scores, it was comfortingly familiar, as movie composers have made frequent restorative journeys to the Russian master’s well of inspiration to lend some zing to their own compositions. Listen to “The Battle on the Ice” from “Alexander Nevsky,” the March from “The Love for Three Oranges,” and perhaps “The Death of Tybalt” from “Romeo and Juliet,” and you pretty much have yourself a film music Rosetta Stone.

During the period when I was first really getting to know this composer, beyond a childhood familiarity with “Peter and the Wolf,” I snapped up any recording of a Prokofiev piece I didn’t already own. Of course, being a student, this often involved a degree of deferred gratification.

I got around that by getting a job as a record clerk at Sam Goody’s, then (before the arrival of Tower Records) sporting the largest classical music section in Philadelphia. There, I basically signed my paycheck back over to the company, as I acquired (piecemeal) my first cycles of the symphonies of Vaughan Williams (Boult), Shostakovich (Haitink), and Prokofiev (Järvi).

After Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (a.k.a. the “Classical Symphony”), No. 5 is the most popular. No. 6 also makes a great effect in concert. But I also felt an instant affinity with No. 4, which is tied up with Prokofiev’s ballet “The Prodigal Son” (choreographed by Balanchine and performed by the Ballets Russes). Prokofiev took some of the themes and episodes from the dance work and developed them into a symphony. And then he returned to it to revise it. I don’t know that it’s the strongest symphony, necessarily, but I found the music strangely compelling. And it wound up having a transformative effect on my life.

It was my whim in those days, when returning to the ancestral home (not too much a prodigal son myself, I hope) to periodically scan the radio frequencies to check if there were any classical music options I may not have known about. On one such occasion, I happened across a classical music broadcast from Allentown, PA. WMUH, based at Muhlenberg College, as a matter of fact. It was a request show, and the host put out the telephone number, so I called in and asked if I could hear Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4.

A short while later, she came back on the air and said, “To the person who phoned in and requested the Prokofiev symphony, we don’t have it in the library, but if you want to call back, you can ask for something else.”

So I did. They didn’t have that either.

It was then that I learned that the person I was speaking with was not only the host, she was the classical director, and she said, “Look, you know more about this stuff than I do. How would you like to come in and do a show?” That’s how I fell in with the Lehigh Valley Community Broadcasters Association and came to helm my first broadcast in the summer of 1986. Little did I realize the ramifications it would have on the rest of my life.

It stuns me to consider that I have been doing radio now for 40 years. Professionally, for the past 31. I mean, I’m not that old, am I?

It helps that I got an early start. I was only 19 at the time. And it turned out I had a knack for it. Knowledge and enthusiasm can take you a long way. In my experience, they have spackled over many imperfections.

By now, I have strayed very far from my objective, which is to let you know that the New York Repertory Orchestra will be performing Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4 this weekend. I’m not sure which version. Does it matter? It’s hardly ever done.

At some point I figured out that the Prokofiev works that communicated most directly were from a certain period of his artistic development. The earlier stuff could be a little more acerbic. Not just for the purposes of tang.

You see, Prokofiev was bit of prodigal son himself, an enfant terrible who drank deeply of the decadent West, before returning to Soviet Russia and all that would entail.

So the program, cleverly conceived by the music director David Leibowitz, works on multiple levels.

You see, you get not only Prokofiev’s “Prodigal Son” symphony, but also, by way of introduction, Claude Debussy’s early Prix de Rome winner, “L’enfant prodigue” (“The Prodigal Son”). When’s the last time you heard THAT?

Debussy originally scored the work for soprano, baritone, tenor, and piano. It was his friend, André Caplet, who provided the orchestration. (Caplet also orchestrated Debussy’s “Clair de lune” and “Children’s Corner,” among others.)

This Saturday at 8:00, both prodigals will be revived in performance by the New York Repertory Orchestra, conducted by Leibowitz, at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 West 46th Street, between 6th & 7th Avenues. Soloists in the Debussy will include soprano Sarah Cambridge, baritone Kyle Oliver, and tenor Kyle van Schoonhoven.

If you’re not enticed at the prospect, probably nothing will sway you, not even the fact that ADMISSION IS FREE (with a recommended donation of $15).

Seriously? What are you waiting for?

Of course, I’ve got a conflict this weekend (again)… But I vow, one of these days, New York Repertory Orchestra, I am coming for you!

For more information, visit https://www.nyro.org/

Clip of the orchestra rehearsing Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4

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PHOTO: Prodigal Prokofiev