Sergei Prokofiev

Russian and Soviet pianist, composer and conductor (1891–1953)

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Lived 1891–1953, aged 62

MusiciansSinger / Musician

Wikipedia
80 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1891–1953
Aged 62
Known for
Wait for me in oblivion
2024

Summary

Updated 2026-09-07

He wrote the mocking march from The Love for Three Oranges, the children's fable Peter and the Wolf, and the brooding "Dance of the Knights" from Romeo and Juliet — pieces that outlasted the Soviet state that both censured and claimed him.

Biography

About

Prokofiev graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and made his early name as an iconoclast, writing ferociously dissonant piano works that scandalized audiences. After the 1917 Revolution he left Russia with official approval and spent nearly two decades in the United States, Germany, and Paris, married Spanish singer Lina Codina, and worked for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The Great Depression dried up Western commissions; in 1936 he returned to the Soviet Union, where he composed Lieutenant Kijé, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Alexander Nevsky, and his late piano sonatas. The Nazi inv…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

said1951

In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify human life and defend it.

— Page 136; from his "Music and Life" (1951).

Sergei Prokofiev

said1937

The time is past when music was written for a handful of aesthetes. Today vast crowds of people have come face to face with serious music and are waiting with eager impatience.

— Page 106; from a notebook entry (1937).

Sergei Prokofiev

said1934

This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest.

— He made a rare admission to a visiting musicologist when he was conducting his Third Symphony in Rome in 1934.

Sergei Prokofiev

said1917

Formalism is music that people don’t understand at first hearing.

— Quoted in Boris Schwarz Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970 (1972) p. 115.

Sergei Prokofiev

saidundated

My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

— Page 7.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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Albums

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Romeo & Juliet
1987
Alexander Nevsky / Lieutenant Kije
1987
Bizet: Symphony in C / Prokofiev: "Classical" Symphony / Stravinsky: Pulcinella
1987
Ballet - Le pas D'acier, op. 41 / Ballet - On the Dnieper, op.51
1987
Romeo and Juliet Suites 1 and 2
1986
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto no. 1 / Prokofiev: Piano Concerto no. 3
1986
Alexander Nevsky / Lieutenant Kijé
1986
Romeo and Juliet Suite no. 2, op. 64 / Dreams, op. 6 / Pushkiniana
1986
Prokofiev: Pierino ed il lupo / Saint-Saëns: Il carnevale degli animali
1986