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LCCE Performs Sergei Prokofiev - Flute Sonata in D Major, Op. 94

Sergei Prokofiev - Flute Sonata in D Major, Op. 94 Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a Russian composer who spent the majority of his life walking the fine line between artistic freedom and political compliance during the dawn and decay of the Soviet Union. When he was only 14 years old, Prokofiev enrolled at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he developed an indifference toward the largely classical — or, as he considered them, “square” — compositional techniques he was forced to subscribe to in his classes; he more readily spent his time in circles such as Saint Petersburg’s Evenings of Contemporary Music, where he performed his own daring piano compositions, and where his liberal use of chromaticism and dissonance was not frowned upon but was rather embraced and even celebrated. He soon gained a reputation, for which he was at once venerable and notorious, for his aptitude for invention even within such popular genres as sonatas, symphonies, ballets, concertos, and operas. Indeed, Prokofiev’s compositional skill seemed to defy the bounds of genre, not because he flouted the notion altogether but because he could so masterfully manipulate whatever music he wished to compose to fit neatly within whatever genre he asked of it — or, as it turned out, whatever genre he was asked to ask of it. Though he traveled extensively abroad — arriving first in San Francisco in 1918 before proceeding to compose in New York City, Paris, and other artistic hubs — Prokofiev eventually conceded a decade later, in the midst of an international Great Depression, that his music was unlikely to receive adequate funding anywhere except in the Soviet Union. There, he lived the remainder of his life under scrutiny of the Soviet Union, an entity whose nebulous doctrines in turns glorified and ridiculed his music: In 1946, his Piano Sonata No. 8 won a Stalin Prize; only two years later, the very same work was banned nationally from all performance. Prokofiev’s main offense in the eyes of the Soviet Union was his “renunciation of the basic principles of classical music,” an outlook which produced, as they saw it, not music but “cacophony.” Such music was considered by Soviet standards inaccessible to the “common man” and, therefore, vain and “undemocratic.” Among the composers accused were Dmitri Shostakovich, who seemed unable to resist the appeal of Prokofiev’s music despite his most earnest efforts to do so, and Nikolai Myaskovsky, a composer long renowned for his symphonies and Prokofiev’s lifelong friend. The Flute Sonata in D major, Op. 94, was composed in 1943 while Prokofiev was living briefly in modern-day Kazakhstan, still well within the sights of Soviet authorities. It is made up of four movements, each of which is defined, with a strategic carefulness, by a form or style that would have commonly appeared in the four-movement sonata structure popularized during the classical period. Prokofiev has meticulously shaped his musical material to fit within the exposition-development-recapitulation of sonata form (mvt. 1), the A-B-A’ of the scherzo (mvt. 2), the quiet of the obligatory slow middle movement (mvt. 3), and the recurrent episodes of the rondo (mvt. 4). It is the musical material within these structures, however, that offers glimpses into Prokofiev’s subtle resistance to outright historical convention and mass accessibility, a resistance which manages to exist directly alongside his necessary compliance to the classical, “democratic” traditions he was forced to champion. Where a formulated sequence of chords would have been used to prepare a proper classical modulation, Prokofiev relies mostly on unapologetic chromaticism; where typical, “square” melodic phrase structures would have threatened to restrict his compositional voice, Prokofiev invents new ways of speaking. Within the adventurous music of the Flute Sonata lives the same youthful proponent of new music who made waves in the Saint Petersburg music scene even while flunking his composition courses, who never ceased composing even in the midst of brutal critiques by concertgoers that wielded unimaginable power. Prokofiev would never again know true artistic freedom — his death was followed by that of Joseph Stalin by less than an hour — but his voice would always somehow manage to ring out even in his most prescribed musical works. And though many attempted to silence it, his is the voice that is still heard ringing today. – Emily Thomas Musicians: Allegra Chapman, piano Stacey Pelinka, bass flute Program: Butterflies, Moons, and Mirrors: A Saariaho Celebration, 31st Season (2023-2024) Audio and Video: Zach Miley https://www.leftcoastensemble.org