Sergei Prokofiev

In its recent season, the American Ballet Theatre put on two Prokofiev ballets, Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella. Those are the big two, in the Prokofiev corpus. There are others.

Romeo and Juliet was written in 1935. Cinderella was written, on and off, from 1940 to 1944. That was not a great time in the Soviet Union. Then again, neither was 1935.

From R&J, Prokofiev made three orchestral suites and a piano suite. From Cinderella, Prokofiev again made three orchestral suites, but this time three piano suites.

Dancing aside—a bold thing to say about a ballet!—Romeo and Juliet is one of the great masterpieces in the whole of the orchestral literature. It is certainly a standout in Romantic music, or twentieth-century music. But in the whole of the orchestral literature? I would say.

Earlier this summer, having heard (and seen) R&J again, I had a thought: Shostakovich and Prokofiev are paired together, eternally. They may not like it, but they are. And Shostakovich is usually—not always, but usually—judged the greater. Yet did Shostakovich ever write anything better than R&J? The Violin Concerto No. 1? The Symphony No. 5? The String Quartet No. 8?

As good, okay, but better?

Romeo and Juliet is nearly a perfect work, and it’s hard to write a perfect work, or nearly perfect work, of that length. A bagatelle is one thing, but a ballet lasting two and a half hours? The sustained genius of this score is staggering.

About five years ago, a friend of mine said, “You know, Cinderella is every bit as good as Romeo and Juliet.” Now, this was not just any friend. He is a highly distinguished musician. And when he talks, I listen. But when he made this comment about the two ballets, I thought, “Well, that’s a nice bit of hyperbole, a nice way of saying, ‘Cinderella is very good, and should not be overlooked.’”

Lately, however, my esteem of Cinderella has gone up and up. It is brilliantly crafted and brilliantly varied. There is subtlety, gaiety, pathos, majesty, and comedy (for the stepsisters). The score is a miracle of dark and light.

And there is lots of dancing in it. What do I mean? That’s a dumb statement, right? It’s a ballet, after all.

What I mean is, the story, and therefore the music, is chockfull of dancing. There’s even a dance lesson, early on. There is a gavotte, a passepied, a bourrée, a mazurka, a few galops, and that glorious, swirling waltz, the Cinderella Waltz.

And when the clock strikes midnight, Prokofiev gives us a surpassing example of beautiful chaos—of chaos in beauty, or beauty in chaos. This moment is stunningly rendered.

Honestly, I have not been able to stop listening to Cinderella, and it is haunting me, as it would haunt anyone who engages with it. Is it as good as Romeo and Juliet? I have my doubts, but comparisons are odious, or odorous, as someone said.

When I was a kid, I esteemed Prokofiev highly, yet I esteem him more with every passing year. Consider the Piano Concerto No. 1. I used to think of it as a youthful work, shot through with testosterone, but maybe a little rough. The more I know it, the more I marvel at its maturity and mastery. Its sheer compositional mastery.

But back to ballet. Should we talk about On the Dnieper, composed in 1931, some years before the Big Two? Maybe some other time . . . 

 

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