Source: http://koussevitzky.net/yuzefovich/vol2-chapter06.php
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 00:47:40+00:00

Document:
"Our publishers resemble an elderly Turk …' Strengthening bonds of friendship. A Symphony 'forged from iron and steel." From The Buffoon to Fiery Angel.
"Black and white, boiling and frozen, cruel and caressing; nothing between the extremes. […] I had the impression that the entire symphony is composed of two musical phrases. The first movement is one single sentence, the second another…."
If for the many years Koussevitzky and Stravinsky were in contact with one another the relationship remained for the most part on a business footing, with Prokofiev the conductor's collaboration grew into a true friendship. It does not follow, however, that it was always entirely friction-free: we shall have evidence of this more than once.
Two weeks later, Oeberg informed Prokofiev that in the absence of a signed contract no further work would be done on publishing his compositions. The same day he so informed Koussevitzky.
However, Prokofiev had no desire to leave RME. When, in 1920, Stravinsky suggested to him that he might be published by Chester, or when in the middle of the decade Universal Edition in Vienna tried to tempt him away, he was not interested. 'The Gutheilers have opened branches in Paris, Brussels and London, and are getting underway in Spain and New York, so their spread is growing well,' he wrote to Myaskovsky in January 1923. 'The conditions under which I work with them are as follows: on publication I receive nothing; once the engraving costs are covered I thereafter receive 50% of sales. The copies carry a printed statement: "propriété de l'auteur et de l'editeur"'.
No more was Prokofiev attracted by the several offers he received from Soviet Russia to have his works published there. It was not only that he found it, as he wrote to Myaskovsky in June 1924, 'ridiculous to take bread from the mouths of Moscow composers waiting their turn', but he appreciated how vital it was for his compositions to be published in the West.
Only once, in 1933, was he tempted by a proposal from Myaskovsky to publish in Russia his (Myaskovsky's) transcription, in collaboration with Vissarion Shebalin, of the Third Symphony, and Prokofiev's own transcription of Schubert Waltzes. Prokofiev was interested to know the reaction of the then Managing Director of RME, Gavriil Paichadze, to the proposal, but, as he informed Myaskovsky, 'he looked bleak, because he believes it is wrong to split a work between two publishers.' The composer then suggested that the transcriptions should be engraved in Moscow and paid for out of the roubles he had left deposited in Russia from his earnings with Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga. But none of this happened: the transcription of the Third Symphony went unpublished. 'It's much easier to deal with a printer than with a progressive music publisher,' lamented Myaskovsky, writing back to Prokofiev in August 1933.
Prokofiev and Koussevitzky went together to the Diaghilev company's premiere of Stravinsky's Apollon musagète. Prokofiev was a frequent guest in the conductor's home, both at receptions and on private domestic occasions, and they often met in the homes of other musicians as well. Whenever they were together, their conversations, in which they swiftly moved to the intimate second person singular, would oscillate between the cultural scene in Paris and family news. There was also time for joint excursions to the circus – 'lion-tamers and a man being shot from the mouth of a cannon.' Koussevitzky spent time one day going round shops in Paris with Prokofiev, in search of a fashionable overcoat for him.
The musicians' wives also made friends. In one December 1926 letter to her friend Natalie, Lina Prokofiev confided that '…Seryozha is learning to drive a car, in the same school where Stravinsky had lessons, and is due to take his test in a few days. We've been teasing him that he is bound to fail ….' In another letter she enclosed snapshots of her first-born son Sviatoslav.
In the spring of 1924 Koussevitzky inveigled Prokofiev into his polemic with the critic Boris de Schloezer. In an article on the subject of Russian critics entitled 'On Musical Criticism', which Koussevitzky had published in an émigré Paris newspaper, Koussevitzky singled out for praise Vyacheslav Karatygin but failed to mention Boris Schloezer at all. Schloezer had great respect for Koussevitzky, but had previously publicly criticized his conducting abilities as too limited for his interpretations to encompass the full elemental gamut of tragedy and contemplation. As soon as he read Koussevitzky's article, Schloezer erupted in a sarcastic rebuttal which inferred unequivocally that Koussevitzky's judgment had been tainted by personal considerations, and that Karatygin was by certainly not the only critic in Russia worthy of the name.
Prokofiev's involvement was, in his own words, instigated by Koussevitzky '… so that I could add some venomous elements to the article.' He felt himself in an ambivalent position. As far back as 1906 Karatygin had been one of the first in St. Petersburg to offer Prokofiev active support, devoting no less than 13 articles to him. 'Bravo, Karatygin!' wrote Prokofiev in his diary in 1914. 'I am in no doubt that given time my classic status will be beyond contention, but to have this said about me just now is very useful in opening the door to America.' Schloezer, in turn, had on several occasions written glowing reports on Prokofiev's music, notably the Fifth Piano Sonata and the Second Piano Concerto. 'Naturally I am on Koussevitzky's side in this polemic,' added Prokofiev, 'although I cannot wholly share Koussevitzky's determination to see in Schloezer nothing but an infinitely malignant excrescence.' In her next letter, Natalie informed her husband that the editor of Latest News, Pavel Milyukov, had promised to find space in his newspaper for Koussevitzky's reply. It has not, however, been possible to establish whether or not it was actually published.
Koussevitzky and Prokofiev relished being incognito, although they did not always succeed. In one picturesque village the two celebrity travellers were unexpectedly recognised by a group of young Polish musicians who were holidaying in the vicinity, and gave them a hearty send-off as they proceeded on their way.
The trip also strengthened the friendship between Prokofiev and Paichadze. In October 1930, at the Prokofievs' dacha near Paris, they went together on mushroom-picking expeditions and made amateur ciné films in which Paichadze impersonated a Hindu in a turban, their mutual friend Boris Samoilenko a criminal, and Prokofiev a detective.
The Koussevitzky Concerts in Paris continued until 1928, and music by Prokofiev was heard in all four of the last seasons. Above all, the interest of musical Paris was aroused by the world premieres of the Second Symphony and a concert performance of the second act of the opera The Fiery Angel.
From 1925 onwards, Koussevitzky kept his seasons of concerts in Paris going alongside his new position of Musical Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Although his assumption of the post in October 1924 will be described later in this book, it will be necessary from time to time before that point to refer to events in Boston, since Koussevitzky's programmes on both sides of the ocean were often very similar.
Koussevitzky was kept abreast, too, of how long the symphony was taking to compose. 'I work every morning on your symphony,' (my emphasis – V. Y.) wrote Prokofiev in November 1924, 'but progress is fairly slow, first because it is a complex construction, and secondly I don't want to bungle it, but to make every moment good.' He asked Koussevitzky to send him books from America on the subject of the technique of playing wind instruments, a request with which the conductor complied.
Several years later Prokofiev would dedicate a symphony, his Fourth, to the Boston Symphony, but as we shall see there was a particular reason for this.
As it turned out, however, the new symphony was not ready for the planned Boston premiere during the 1924-25 season. It was decided to give the first performance in Paris, and it was in that city that Koussevitzky had his first sight of the score. On May 17th 1925 the composer played it through to him on the piano, as his diary tells us 'very roughly and cursorily.' Musically Koussevitzky accepted it without demur, even though his impression was that it would be so difficult to perform that his first thought was not to perform it at all that season but to delay it until the following season in Boston. Prokofiev, however, desperately anxious to present himself to the French public with a new work, held out for Paris.
Koussevitzky agreed, and even managed to arrange two extra rehearsals with the orchestra. 'Hurrah!' exclaimed Prokofiev. 'The Symphony will go ahead. There will be four extra double basses, making fourteen in all. To Koussevitzky I enlarged on the difference between a work dedicated subsequently and a work "written for"'. Probably he was referring to the special attention he had given, in the development of the symphony's first movement, to the double basses. This was, as the Prokofiev biographer and scholar David Nice, points out, '… the first of Prokofiev's several homages to Koussevitzky the double-bass player.' Another, later, example would be the famous bass solo in the song "The Little Grey Dove Moans" in the second movement of the Suite from Lieutenant Kijé.
What was it that, for a musical practitioner so skilled in the music of Prokofiev as Koussevitzky, so unexpectedly went wrong with the Second Symphony? There are several reasons. We must assume that the primary cause lies in the fact that Koussevitzky, bringing the symphony to the concert platform so soon after its composition, did not have enough time thoroughly to assimilate the score's unfamiliar style. Like the ballet Le pas d'acier, which still lay in the future, the Second Symphony remained for the conductor an embodiment of Prokofiev's tensely overwrought urbanism, and appeared to him an uneven composition. He liked the variations of the second movement, also the main and concluding sections of the first movement, but could not understand the second subject at all. 'Kuskin suggested "as a friend" that I should eliminate it from the symphony altogether,' Prokofiev told Myaskovsky in December.
One can only guess at the reasons for the absence, one might almost say concealment, of Prokofiev's Second Symphony from the discography of Koussevitzky and other conductors. The key to understanding this music and, in part, its lack of success for Koussevitzky, may be found in the exegesis – in his performances and in words – it drew from the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Many years later it fell to him to rescue the work from oblivion.
Rozhdestvensky's approach underlines the ultimately monolithic nature of the first movement through the emotional correspondence of the main and second subjects. The main theme is an earthly sphere aflame with all the evil spirits of the world, as if drawn into an infernal dance: serpents, toads, Kikimori, hideous faces, skeletons, hundreds of witches each more frightening than Baba-Yaga, thousands of Kashcheis. The second subject is no more ingratiating, although as if seen from a remote distance, from a flying carpet high aloft. The symphony achieves contrast on a more expansive scale, in which the conductor sets as his opposite poles the truly apocalyptic storm that engulfs the whole of the first movement, and the haughty lyricism, irresistible in its measured pace, of the second movement.
One may surmise that the first movement's second subject failed to convince Koussevitzky because of his attempts make it contrast with the main subject. This is undoubtedly how the French conductor Charles Bruck sees it in his recording of the Second Symphony.
The success, or lack of it, Prokofiev's works enjoyed when performed by Koussevitzky or other conductors had no effect on their chances of publication with RME. Such was Koussevitzky's policy in his role of publisher. Even when he did not care for Prokofiev's new works they were invariably included in the publisher's plans.
In the end it was decided to print both the full score and the orchestral parts. Despite the composer's long delay correcting the proofs, overburdened as he was with the re-composition of The Gambler, the printed score and parts appeared at the end of 1928. Paichadze sent them immediately to Koussevitzky, and followed up by persuading the conductor to include the work in his repertoire next year. When Leopold Stokowski also expressed interest, Koussevitzky suggested to him that they give separate Uraufführungen on the same day in Philadelphia and Boston. Negotiations between the two conductors dragged on for a year, but in the end only Stokowski performed it. Koussevitzky's own copy of the score bears not a single conductor's marking. Prokofiev's Second Symphony would not be heard in Boston until March 15th 1968 when it was conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, who two years earlier (on February 4th 1966) had directed the Boston Symphony in the premiere of Prokofiev's Third Symphony.
In 1926 Koussevitzky turned his attention to the Suite from Prokofiev's ballet The Tale of the Buffoon (June 3rd 1926 in the Grand Opéra; October 8th and 9th in Boston; November 27th in New York). Although Prokofiev complained that only four numbers of the Suite were performed, he seems to have forgotten that the selection of the numbers for these performances was agreed by himself in collaboration with Koussevitzky. In rehearsal, as he said ' … the tempi were a little on the slow side, but everything was clear,' while at the concert performance '…The Suite from Chout was very well played, and was a great success.' The advertisement in the Boston Evening Transcript on October 7th 1926 for the new Prokofiev premiere on October 27th included a Mikhail Larionov sketch for the 1921 Diaghilev production.
As early as 1922 Gutheil issued the composer's piano transcription of the Buffoon ballet score. '… Now that prices in Germany have risen so high,' Prokofiev wrote to Myaskovsky from Ettal soon afterwards, 'Koussevitzky has chosen this moment to discontinue printing. The orchestral score and parts of the Suite from Chout exist in an edition of only a few hire copies, there are no plans for a miniature score edition, and engraving of the Classical Symphony has been altogether postponed.' The composer's full score and piano transcription of the Suite were issued only in 1924.
Once again, as had frequently been the case in the past, Koussevitzky's conducting and publishing interests were closely intertwined. Even before performing the Overture he had advised Prokofiev to consider transcribing it for full symphony orchestra, and the Paris performance convinced the composer to follow this advice. By 1930, when the question arose of RME's publishing the work, Koussevitzky chose the second, enlarged version, Op. 42A.
Koussevitzky first heard Prokofiev's ballet Le pas d'acier (The Steel Step) on May 13th 1926. Prokofiev played it through in Koussevitzky's home to the host and a visitor to Paris, Boleslav Yavorsky, along with the recently composed Fifth Piano Sonata. The conductor attended the premiere by the Diaghilev company on June 7th 1927, when also in the audience were Paichadze, Stravinsky, Suvchinsky and Dukelsky.
At the same time Prokofiev put together a four-movement Suite from the ballet. Koussevitzky did not plan a Paris performance, and the world premiere took place under his baton in Boston on October 21st and 22nd 1927. As had happened with the Second Symphony, these two performances were the only ones he gave. 'Can it really be the case that Americans cannot fathom music written in C major, and were they not able to grasp even one melody?' asked a puzzled Prokofiev the following month.
The problem, however, lay not with the American public but with Koussevitzky. He never warmed either to the ballet's diatonic, 'white-key' music, or to its 'Bolshevik' subject – 'White music for a Red ballet,' as Prokofiev had put it to Diaghilev in August 1925, early in the composition process. Nor did he like Prokofiev's choice of music to include in the Suite. 'Le pas d'acier has not been successful and never will be in the form Prokofiev has chosen for it,' he wrote to Paichadze in late 1927. 'The last four numbers of his selection kill one another. They work very well on the stage, but are absolutely wrong for the concert platform. … I looked at other numbers and came up with a choice that will offer more contrasts than those chosen by S.S. Naturally I will repeat Pas d'acier in New York, but this time will create my own, quite different, suite.' Paichadze, however, figuring that the conductor was not after all likely to return to this score, asked for it to be sent back to him at the publishers since interest in it was being expressed in Moscow. The five-movement Four Portraits and Dénouement from The Gambler was likewise offered by Koussevitzky to the American public only once, on November 4th and 5th 1932 in Boston.
In November 1924 Prokofiev brought Koussevitzky up to date on the progress of work on two other opera-based Suites, those from The Love for Three Oranges and The Fiery Angel, emphasising that he attached greater importance to the latter. The following spring Natalie Koussevitzky put forward the possibility of a concert performance of excerpts from Fiery Angel, a notion to which the composer was initially opposed. He still hoped for a stage realisation of the opera.
The previous year, Jacques Hébertot had instigated a project to produce Fiery Angel for the stage. The entrepreneur had been in charge of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées since 1920, and was keen that Koussevitzky should move his concert season from the Grand Opéra to his theatre. When it emerged that Hébertot lacked the financial wherewithal to advance the ten thousand francs Prokofiev needed to complete his work on the score of Fiery Angel, Koussevitzky offered to provide the sum. Prokofiev regarded this as a gesture of true friendship, but the planned production did not materialise.
Bruno Walter also intended to mount a production at the Berlin Staatsoper in the 1926-27 season. However, despairing by the fall of 1927 of receiving the score of the opera – which RME had not printed – he removed it from the theatre's repertoire. It was at that point that Prokofiev decided to ask Koussevitzky, via Natalie, to include either the second act of Angel, or a selection of excerpts from The Gambler, in his Paris programmes for 1928. 'Thank God, I have finished The Gambler and am very pleased with my revision, which in truth amounts to a re-composition,' he wrote to Koussevitzky on March 19th 1928.
In the end, however, it was decided to programme Act II of Fiery Angel omitting the scene with Jakob Glok and the spiritual séance. Rehearsals went well from the start. Koussevitzky sensed the long-breathed breadth of the music, which Prokofiev himself described as 'written in broad lines'.
Koussevitzky replied that he would be happy for her to join him on the concert platform. Her Paris appearance in The Fiery Angel was preceded by her engagement in Boston, where on February 10th and 11th 1928 she was the soprano soloist in Florent Schmitt's Psalm XLVII and also, at her own request, sang Yaroslavna's Lament from Prince Igor, with the orchestra conducted by Koussevitzky.
The 1928 season was the last time the Koussevitzky Concerts were to be heard in Paris. A year later, Prokofiev's Prodigal Son would bring the final curtain down on Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The final Koussevitzky Concert included along with Prokofiev's Fiery Angel the premiere of Dukelsky's Symphony, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
The Paris period of Prokofiev's oeuvre is often referred to as his Diaghilev period (despite the many private misgivings the composer had about the impresario and his aesthetic). A more percipient insight would be to see it as the Diaghilev and Koussevitzky period. Koussevitzky's musical collaboration with Prokofiev was to last for the whole of the quarter-century the conductor led the Boston Symphony. To this relationship we shall be returning in due course.
 G. Rozhdestvenskii 'Neizvedannyi mir' in Muzyka i sovremennost', 2nd edition, Sovetskii Kompozitor, Moscow 1963 p158.
 E. Oeberg to N. Koussevitzky, December 7 1922, Leipzig, KA-LC.
 Oeberg to S. Koussevitzky, July 16 1923, Paris, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to P. Suvchinsky, October 18 1922, Ettal. Quoted in V muzykal'nom krugu russkogo zarubezh'ya, Pis'ma k Pyotru Suvchinskomu, comp and ed Ye. Pol'dyaeva, Berlin 2005 p75.
 N. Koussevitzky to S. Koussevitzky, April 23 1924, Paris, KA-LC.
 'His little boy is a darling and I think will take more after his mother,' wrote Natalie, 'but when I told Prokofiev that he would grow up to be better-looking than he is, he took offence.' (ibid).
 E. Oeberg to N. Koussevitzky, November 14 1924, Paris, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, August 3 1923, Ettal. In S.S. Prokof'ev and N. Ya. Myaskovsky. Perepiska, comp and ed M. Kozlova and N. Yatsenko, commentary V. Kiselëv, introduction and index M. Kozlova, Sovetskii Kompozitor, Moscow 1977 p166.
 S. Prokof'ev to P. Suvchinsky, April 14 1922, Ettal. Quoted in V muzykal'nom krugu, Op. cit. p50.
 S. Prokof'ev to E. Oeberg, April 26 1923, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to V. Derzhanovsky, November 23 1922, Ettal, GTsMMK fond 3 (S.S. Prokof'ev), No. 871, Sheet 1.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, July 31 1922, Ettal, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to E. Oeberg, April 26 1923, Ettal, AL-LCe.
 E. Oeberg to N. Koussevitzky, May 8 1923, Berlin, KA-LC.
 Sergei Prokof'ev Diaries Vol 3: Prodigal Son, tr A. Phillips, Faber & Faber, London 2012 p44.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, February 10 1925, Bellevue, KA-LC.
 Both letters are preserved in the Prokofiev Archive in London. Quoted in Ye. Pol'dyaeva 'Prokof'ev i russkaya emigratsiya v Parizhe 20-ikh godov' in Sergei Prokof'ev. Pis'ma, Vospominaniya. Stat'i, GTsMMK, Moscow 2007 p256.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, October 27 1924, Bellevue, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Koussevitzky, November 28 1924, Bellevue, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, January 4 1923, Ettal. In S.S. Prokof'ev and N. Ya. Myaskovsky. Perepiska, executive ed and introduction D. Kabalevsky, comp and ed M. Kozlova and N. Yatsenko, commentary V. Kiselëv, Sovetskii Kompozitor, Moscow 1977 p149.
 'Property of the composer and the editor'.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, ibid, p401.
 N. Myaskovsky to S. Prokof'ev, Op. cit p405. Myaskovsky had a job as an editor at Musgiz (the State Music Publishing House). Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga ('International Book') was the organisation established in the USSR in 1923 to handle the importing of foreign books and music, and the exporting of Soviet publications. It operated alongside VOKS (Vsesoyuznoe obshchestvo kul'turnykh svyazyei) [All-Union Society for Cultural Relations] which was responsible for the exchange of cultural manifestations such as exhibitions, concert and theatre tours, etc.
 G. Paichadze to N. Koussevitzky, October 31 1927, Paris, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, May 11, Paris, KA-LC. The occasion was the third recital Prokofiev gave in Paris that season (the first had taken place in November 1923, the second on 9th March in the Opéra Comique.) Both these recitals had included Musorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition, a work that was enjoying great popularity in Paris on account of Koussevitzky having recently premiered Ravel's orchestration of the original piano score. In March, Prokofiev had played his new Fifth Piano Sonata for the first time, while the May recital was shared with the soprano Zinaïda Yurevskaya, whom the composer accompanied in a group of his songs as well as a group of solo piano pieces including the Toccata. The Koussevitzkys did attend. See Prokof'ev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. pp 30, 52.
 See Prokof'ev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit, p850.
 L. Prokof'eva to N. Koussevitzky, December 13 1926, Paris, KA-LC.
 N. Koussevitzky to S. Koussevitzky, undated (1923), Paris, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, undated, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, July 8 1923, Ettal, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Koussevitzky, January 19 1925, Warsaw, KA-LC.
 In Poslednye Novosti (Latest News), Paris, on March 17th 1924.
 Schloezer's critical article had appeared in Zhar-ptitsa (The Firebird), 1921, No. 4-5.
 Koussevitzky's letter to the Parisian press was enclosed in a letter despatched by Natalie Koussevitzky from London on April 4th 1924 to Vladimir Zederbaum in Paris, with a request for it to be sent as an open letter to the press.
 Prokof'ev Diaries Vol 1: 1907-1904, Prodigious Youth, tr A. Phillips, Faber & Faber, London 2006 p593.
 Prokof'ev, Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. p43.
 N. Koussevitzky to S. Koussevitzky, April 15 1924, Paris, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Koussevitzky, November 18 1926, Paris, KA-LC.
 L. Prokof'eva to N. Koussevitzky, July 20 1928, Château de Vétraz, Haute Savoie. KA-LC.
 S. Koussevitzky to N. Koussevitzky, August 11 1928, AK LC.
 Prokof'ev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. p718.
 L. Prokof'eva to N. Koussevitzky, August 17 1928, Château de Vétraz, Haute Savoie, KA-LC.
 L. Prokof'eva to N. Koussevitzky, September 14 1928, Château de Vétraz, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev, L. Prokof'eva, P. Lamm, B. Asafiev to S. Koussevitzky, September 29 1928, Lugano, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, October 15 1928, Paris, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, November 14 1928, Paris, KA-LC.
 Prokofiev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. pp69-70.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Koussevitzky, September 25 1924, St. Gilles, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Koussevitzky, January 2 1925, Bellevue, KA-LC.
 Prokof'ev Diaries, Op. cit. vol 3 p 163.
 D. Nice Prokofiev: From Russia to the West, 1891-1935, Yale UP, New Haven and London 2003 pp212-3.
 Prokof'ev Diaries, Op. cit, vol 3 p169.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, August 4 1925, Marlotte, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit p216.
 N. Myaskovsky to S. Prokof'ev, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit p219.
 N. Myaskovsky to S. Prokof'ev, November 3 1924, Moscow, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit p226.
 Prokofiev Autobiography in Shlifshteyn (ed) S.S. Prokofiev, Op. cit. p174.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, August 4 1924, Marlotte, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit p216.
 P. Suvchinsky to S. Prokof'ev, October 22 1924, Paris. Quoted in V muzykal'nom krugu, Op. cit. p129.
 N. Myaskovsky to S. Prokof'ev, August 16 1924, Moscow, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit. p219.
 N. Myaskovsky to S. Prokof'ev, November 3, Moscow, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit. p226.
 Prokofiev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit, p301.
. Yu. V. 'Iz besedy s Prokof'evym' ['From an Interview with Prokofiev'] in Rabochy i teatr, Leningrad, 1927 No. 8, February 22, p12.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, December 6 1925, Clamart, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit. See also Prokofiev's account of the discussion in his diary entry for June 12th 1925 (Prokofiev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. p176).
 Ibid, p245. Neither was it successful when, after Koussevitzky's premiere performance, it was conducted in Paris by the active promoter of contemporary music Walter Straram, on May 6th 1926 and again on February 16th 1928. 'Not very talented, but meticulous,' was Prokofiev's laconic verdict on Straram. As he reported to Myaskovsky, the conductor had '…studied the score much better than Koussya,' although '… still the latter's overall line was more elegant.' (S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, May 15 1926, Paris. In Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit. p242). As for the score itself Alexander Gauk, who performed the work in Moscow in 1935, had this to say: '… very difficult both for the orchestra and for the conductor.' (A. Gauk 'Po stranitsam vospominanii dirizhëra', in Aleksandr Vasilievich Gauk. Memuary. Izbrannye stat'i. Vospominania sovremennikov, comp and ed L. Gauk, R. Glezer, Ya. Milshtein, Sovetskii Kompozitor, Moscow 1975 p113). Like Koussevitzky, he made no attempt to repeat the performance.
 Gennady Rozhdestvensky 'Neizvedannyi mir' in Muzyka i sovremennost' vol 2, Sovetskii Kompozitor, Moscow 1963 p158.
 Large Symphony Orchestra of Central Television and All-Union Radio, LP Melodiya 33C 0337-8; CD Consonance 815007; BMG 74321669792.
 Rozhdestvensky 'Neizvedannyi mir', Op. cit. p158.
 The Kikimora is a generally malevolent creature in Russian mythology. Coming in, unwelcome, from the swamp or the forest, where she is the wife of Leshy, the Wood-demon, she takes up residence behind the stove or in the cellar of the house she haunts. When home builders fell out with their clients, they would fashion a Kikimora doll and conceal it under the main beam or under the front corner of the house. Your dishes will break, the stove will go out, the wind and rain will come in and the chickens will not lay eggs and die. If Kikimora has come to live in your house, you will find it almost impossible to make her leave. Baba-Yaga in Russian folklore is a witch who flies around not on a broomstick but in a mortar, wielding a pestle. She is inconceivably hideous and lives in a hut in the forest which stands on fowl's legs. Despite her unappealing appearance she is not all bad. The folkloric scholar Andreas Johns characterises her as: 'a many-faceted figure, capable of inspiring researchers to see her as a Cloud, Moon, Death, Winter, Snake, Bird, Pelican or Earth Goddess, totemic matriarchal ancestress, female initiator, phallic mother, or archetypical image.' (A. Johns 'Baba Yaga and the Russian Mother' in The Slavic and East European Journal 1998, No. 42 p21). Kashchei the Immortal is the primeval enemy of man, an ever-present threat. He cannot be killed by ordinary means because his soul is detached from his body and is hidden inside an egg, which has been swallowed by a duck which has in turn been eaten by a hare. The hare is inside an iron chest buried on the remote island of Buyan.
 Orchestre National de l'ORTF, LP, Columbia FCX 629.
 The revised version of 1928.
 G. Paichadze to S. Koussevitzky, November 14 1929, Danzig, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Koussevitzky, November 29 1927, Paris, KA-LC.
 Prokofiev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. pp329, 331. The original Russian title of Prokofiev's ballet, based on a folk tale from Afanasiev's collection, Skazka pro shuta, semerykh shutov pereshutivsego [The Tale of the Buffoon Who Out-Buffooned Seven Buffoons] is (like the plot) somewhat abstruse and unwieldy for Anglophone ballet-goers, who consequently usually know it as The Tale of the Buffoon, or even more simply The Buffoon.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, October 5 1923, Ettal, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit. p171.
 D. Nice Prokofiev. From Russia to the West, Op. cit. p244.
 Prokof'ev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. p469.
 Sergei Prokof'ev 'Parizh. Vesennyii sezon 1927 goda', quoted in V. Varunts 'Novye materialy iz zarubezhnykh arkhivov' in Muzykal'naya Akademiya 2000, No. 2 p189.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Koussevitzky, November 29 1927, Paris, KA-LC.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Diaghilev, August 16 1925, Marlotte. Quoted in Varunts, Op. cit. p196.
 S. Koussevitzky to G. Paichadze, undated (after October 22 1927), Boston, KA-LC.
 Prokof'ev Diaries, Op. cit. pp74-5.
 RME did publish the vocal score of Fiery Angel in 1927.
 S. Prokof'ev to S. Koussevitzky, March 19 1928, Paris, KA-LC.
 Prokof'ev Diaries, vol 3, Op. cit. p711.
 N. Koshetz to S. Koussevitzky, January 13 1927, San Sebastian, KA-LC.
 Prokof'ev Diaries, Op. cit, vol 3 p712.
 Prokofiev Diaries, Op. cit. pp712-3.
 B. Schloezer: untitled article in Latest News (Paris), June 22 1928, clipping in Koussevitzky's archive (KA-LC). Prokofiev's Third Symphony was completed on November 3 1928.
 S. Prokof'ev to N. Myaskovsky, July 15 1924, St. Gilles-sur-Vie, in Prokof'ev i Myaskovsky perepiska, Op. cit. p199.

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