Articles ‘Placeless, Dateless’ Documents in the Sergei
Prokofiev Collection (based on materials in the
Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture)
(Elena Krivtsova) Sergei Prokofiev and Moldova: Creative and
Biographical Ties (Elena Mironenko) Prokofiev’s Unrealised Film Projects
(Iuliia Khait) Prokofiev and Soviet Musical Aesthetics
(Terry Dean) A birthday fête in Moscow: ‘Prokofiev in the
modern world’, 27-30 April 2011 (Kevin Bartig) Madrid 30 September 2011 Review Prokofiev. Man of the people? Ivana Gavric From the Street (Kevin Bartig) Contributors  Lina Prokofiev in traditional Spanish maiden's dress, 1920
| This past April, the Glinka State Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow hosted an elaborate conference dedicated to the 120th anniversary of Prokofiev’s birth in Sontsovka, Ukraine. Ekaterina Vlasova assembled the panels and attended to the logistics; the overall success of the event attested to her organisational derring-do. As Kevin Bartig reports in the reviews section of this issue, the conference was accompanied by chamber music concerts at the Moscow Conservatory and the Prokofiev Apartment-Museum (Prokofiev actually lived next door). Iuliia De Klerk curated an impressive exhibit of Prokofiev’s operatic and balletic output using materials from the Glinka collection and the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. The 1946 Disney cartoon Make Mine Music, the first cinematic adaptation of Peter and the Wolf, served as cheerful backdrop to the talks. Three of the papers—by Iuliia Khait, Elena Krivtsova, and Yelena Mironenko—provided substantial new information about Prokofiev’s life and work, and they are published here, in expanded form. Khait discusses three unrealised cinematic projects; Krivtsova examines a series of undated documents from the Glinka archive; and Mironenko details Prokofiev’s little-known performances in Bucharest, while also tracing the biography of one of Prokofiev’s creative assistants, Georgii Gorchakov. A fourth article, by Terry Dean, continues the discussion of Prokofiev’s operatic aesthetic from issue 21. This page is also pleased to note that, at the end of September, as part of a series of events aimed at strengthening cultural relations between Spain and Russia, a memorial plaque was unveiled at 4 Calle de Doña Bárbara de Braganza in Madrid. This is the building where Lina Prokofiev (née Codina) was born on 21 October 21 1897. Members of the Prokofiev family attended the ceremony, along with Valentina Chemberdzhi, a Barcelona resident and author of a well-received biography of Lina Prokofiev published in Russian and Spanish. The festivities included a performance of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, which had received its première in Madrid on 1 December 1935. A photo-essay of the unveiling may be found on the Prokofiev Foundation website. Simon Morrison 20 January 2012 |
