Prokofiev's Early Opera ‘Maddalena’

Extract

The year 1911 was in many respects a landmark in Prokofiev's early career as a composer. He was then twenty years old and a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, where his studies at the time included classes in conducting with Nikolay Cherepnin, and an intensive piano course with the famous Anna Nikolayevna Yesipova. He was already known in St. Petersburg as an exponent of his own piano music and had frequently appeared in this role at Nuvel's Evenings of Modern Music as well as at student concerts. He had also performed his works in Moscow, and the enthusiastic reviews of his compositions which Myaskovsky and Boris Asafyev contributed to the avant-garde magazine Muzyka had further promoted his reputation in the more musically-conservative capital. In 1911 his music appeared in print for the first time, when Jurgenson published the First Piano Sonata and the Four Piano Pieces of Op. 3. The same year saw the beginnings of the First Piano Concerto, Op. 10, which was to have its successful premiere in Moscow the following summer with the composer as soloist. By 1911 also, Prokofiev had composed the Sinfonietta, Op. 5, and the two short symphonic poems. Dreams, Op. 6, and Autumnal Sketch, Op. 8.