Prokofiev: Orchestral Works
View all works by Prokofiev in the main appExplore the complete catalog of Orchestral compositions by Prokofiev. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.
| Title | Year | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Pushkin Waltzes, op. 120 |
Sergei Prokofiev wrote the two Pushkin Waltzes (Op. 120) in 1949. |
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| 4 Marches for Brass Band, op. 69 |
This is a list of some of the standards of concert band repertoire. |
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| 4 Portraits and Dénoument, op. 49 | ||
| Anthem for Military Band, op. 98 |
This is a list of musical compositions by the 20th-century Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Boris Godunov, incidental music, op. 70 bis |
Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (Russian Бори́с Ива́нович Ти́щенко; 23 March 1939 – 9 December 2010) was a Russian and Soviet composer and pianist. |
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| Cello Concerto in E minor, op. 58 |
Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, in 1912 and completed it the next year. However, that version of the concerto is lost; the score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution. Prokofiev reconstructed the work in 1923, two years after finishing his Piano Concerto No. 3, and declared it to be "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered [Piano Concerto] No. 4." Indeed, its orchestration has features that clearly postdate the 1921 concerto. Performing as soloist, Prokofiev premiered this "No. 2" in Paris on 8 May 1924 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting. It is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April 1913 after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev. |
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| Chout, suite from the ballet, op. 21b | ||
| Cinderella Suite no. 1, op. 107 |
Cinderella (Russian: Золушка, tr. Zolushka; French: Cendrillon) Op. 87, is a ballet composed by Sergei Prokofiev to a scenario by Nikolai Volkov. It is one of his most popular and melodious compositions, and has inspired a great many choreographers since its inception. The piece was composed between 1940 and 1944. Part way through writing it Prokofiev broke off to write his opera War and Peace. The premiere of Cinderella was conducted by Yuri Fayer on 21 November, 1945, at the Bolshoi Theatre, with choreography by Rostislav Zakharov and Galina Ulanova in the title role. Cinderella is notable for its jubilant music, lush scenery, and for the comic double-roles of the stepmother and the two stepsisters (which can be performed in travesti), more mad than bad in this treatment. |
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| Cinderella Suite no. 2, op. 108 |
Cinderella (Russian: Золушка, tr. Zolushka; French: Cendrillon) Op. 87, is a ballet composed by Sergei Prokofiev to a scenario by Nikolai Volkov. It is one of his most popular and melodious compositions, and has inspired a great many choreographers since its inception. The piece was composed between 1940 and 1944. Part way through writing it Prokofiev broke off to write his opera War and Peace. The premiere of Cinderella was conducted by Yuri Fayer on 21 November, 1945, at the Bolshoi Theatre, with choreography by Rostislav Zakharov and Galina Ulanova in the title role. Cinderella is notable for its jubilant music, lush scenery, and for the comic double-roles of the stepmother and the two stepsisters (which can be performed in travesti), more mad than bad in this treatment. |
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| Cinderella Suite no. 3, op. 109 |
Cinderella (Russian: Золушка, tr. Zolushka; French: Cendrillon) Op. 87, is a ballet composed by Sergei Prokofiev to a scenario by Nikolai Volkov. It is one of his most popular and melodious compositions, and has inspired a great many choreographers since its inception. The piece was composed between 1940 and 1944. Part way through writing it Prokofiev broke off to write his opera War and Peace. The premiere of Cinderella was conducted by Yuri Fayer on 21 November, 1945, at the Bolshoi Theatre, with choreography by Rostislav Zakharov and Galina Ulanova in the title role. Cinderella is notable for its jubilant music, lush scenery, and for the comic double-roles of the stepmother and the two stepsisters (which can be performed in travesti), more mad than bad in this treatment. |
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| Concertino for Cello and Orchestra in G minor, op. 132 |
This is a list of musical compositions by the 20th-century Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Divertissement, op. 43 |
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (27 April [O.S. 15 April] 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument, including his first two piano concertos. In 1915, Prokofiev made a decisive break from the standard composer-pianist category with his orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev—Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son—which, at the time of their original production, all caused a sensation among both critics and colleagues. But Prokofiev's greatest interest was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia. After the Revolution of 1917, Prokofiev left Russia with the approval of Soviet People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, and resided in the United States, then Germany, then Paris, making his living as a composer, pianist and conductor. In 1923 he married a Spanish singer, Carolina (Lina) Codina, with whom he had two sons; they divorced in 1947. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofiev's ballets and operas to be staged in America and Western Europe. Prokofiev, who regarded himself as a composer foremost, resented the time taken by touring as a pianist, and increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for commissions of new music; in 1936, he finally returned to his homeland with his family. His greatest Soviet successes included Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Alexander Nevsky, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, On Guard for Peace, and the Piano Sonatas Nos. 6–8. The Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred Prokofiev to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace; he co-wrote the libretto with Mira Mendelson, his longtime companion and later second wife. In 1948, Prokofiev was attacked for producing "anti-democratic formalism". Nevertheless, he enjoyed personal and artistic support from a new generation of Russian performers, notably Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich: he wrote his Ninth Piano Sonata for the former and his Symphony-Concerto for the latter. |
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| Dreams, op. 6 |
Cinderella (Russian: Золушка, tr. Zolushka; French: Cendrillon) Op. 87, is a ballet composed by Sergei Prokofiev to a scenario by Nikolai Volkov. It is one of his most popular and melodious compositions, and has inspired a great many choreographers since its inception. The piece was composed between 1940 and 1944. Part way through writing it Prokofiev broke off to write his opera War and Peace. The premiere of Cinderella was conducted by Yuri Fayer on 21 November, 1945, at the Bolshoi Theatre, with choreography by Rostislav Zakharov and Galina Ulanova in the title role. Cinderella is notable for its jubilant music, lush scenery, and for the comic double-roles of the stepmother and the two stepsisters (which can be performed in travesti), more mad than bad in this treatment. |
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| Egyptian Nights, op. 61 |
This is a list of musical compositions by the 20th-century Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Hamlet, incidental music, op. 77 |
Numerous cultural references to Hamlet (in film, literature, arts, etc.) reflect the continued influence of this play. Hamlet is one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays, topping the list at the Royal Shakespeare Company since 1879, as of 2004. |
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| Le pas d'acier, op. 41 bis |
Le pas d'acier (The Steel Step or The Leap of Steel; Russian: Стальной скок), Op. 41, is a 1926 ballet in two scenes containing eleven dances composed by Sergei Prokofiev. Prokofiev also created a four-movement orchestral suite from the ballet (Op. 41b). |
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| March for Military Band in B flat major, op. 99 |
This is a list of musical compositions by the 20th-century Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Ode to the End of the War, for winds, 8 harps, 4 pianos, brass, percussion and double basses, op. 105 |
Dmitri Shostakovich typically catalogued his compositions and occasionally his arrangements of other composers' music with opus numbers. He began this practice with the early Scherzo in F-sharp minor and continued until the end of his life. Nevertheless, most of his juvenilia, unfinished works from his artistic maturity (such as the operas Orango and The Gamblers), and numerous completed works were left unnumbered. There were also instances when Shostakovich took an opus number assigned to one work, then gave it to another, or was undecided about the numbering of a finished composition. Further complicating the matter was an error he committed in compiling his own music in the 1930s. This led to his soundtracks for The Youth of Maxim and Girl Friends sharing the same opus number. |
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| Overture in B flat major, for 17 instruments, op. 42, "American" |
This is a list of musical compositions by the 20th-century Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Overture on Hebrew Themes, op. 34 bis |
Sergei Prokofiev wrote the Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34, in 1919 while he was in the United States. It is scored for the rare combination of clarinet, string quartet and piano. Fifteen years later the composer prepared a version for chamber orchestra, his “Op. 34 bis” or Op. 34a, retaining a separate part for piano but featuring solo cello as much as solo clarinet. Until recently the chamber orchestra version had been the better known, being easily programmable by orchestras, while the original version (for six instruments) requires out-of-the-way planning on the part of a string quartet. But two recordings have drawn attention to the original: Michel Portal clarinet, Parrenin Quartet, Michel Béroff piano (1974); and Giora Feidman clarinet, Juilliard String Quartet, Yefim Bronfman piano (1994). |
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| Peter and the Wolf, op. 67 |
Peter and the Wolf (Russian: Пе́тя и волк, romanized: Pétya i volk, IPA: [ˈpʲetʲə i voɫk]), Op. 67, a "symphonic tale for children", is a programmatic musical composition written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936. The narrator tells a Russian folk tale, which the orchestra illustrates by using different instruments to play themes that represent each character in the story. |
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| Piano Concerto no. 1 in D flat major, op. 10 |
Sergei Prokofiev set about composing his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D♭ major, Op. 10, in 1911, and finished it the next year. The shortest of all his concertos, it is in one movement, about 15 minutes in duration, and dedicated to the “dreaded Tcherepnin.” |
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| Piano Concerto no. 2 in G minor, op. 16 |
Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, in 1912 and completed it the next year. However, that version of the concerto is lost; the score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution. Prokofiev reconstructed the work in 1923, two years after finishing his Piano Concerto No. 3, and declared it to be "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered [Piano Concerto] No. 4." Indeed, its orchestration has features that clearly postdate the 1921 concerto. Performing as soloist, Prokofiev premiered this "No. 2" in Paris on 8 May 1924 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting. It is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April 1913 after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev. |
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| Piano Concerto no. 3 in C major, op. 26 |
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26, is a piano concerto by Sergei Prokofiev. It was completed in 1921 using sketches first started in 1913. |
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| Piano Concerto no. 4 in B flat major, op. 53 |
Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 4 in B♭ major for the left hand, Op. 53, was commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein and completed in 1931. |
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| Piano Concerto no. 5, op. 55 |
The last complete piano concerto by Sergei Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 5 in G major, Op. 55, dates to 1932. It was premiered by Prokofiev himself at the piano on October 30, 1932, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Prokofiev's last piano concerto dates from 1932, a year after he finished the fourth piano concerto, whose solo part is for left hand only. According to the composer, he was then inspired to write another for two hands, whose intended simplicity was reflected in the desire to call it, not a concerto, but rather 'Music for Piano and Orchestra.' However, as the piece grew in complexity, Prokofiev decided to include it among his numbered concerti instead. It is in five short movements. The longest, a Larghetto, is around seven minutes in length. The remaining four movements are all in a fast tempo and feature virtuoso keyboard writing; the third movement, only around two minutes long, functions as a variation on the first. |
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| Romeo and Juliet Suite no. 1, op. 64bis |
Romeo and Juliet (Russian: Ромео и Джульетта, romanized: Romeo i Dzhulyetta), Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev made from the ballet three orchestral suites and a suite for solo piano. |
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| Romeo and Juliet Suite no. 2, op. 64ter |
Romeo and Juliet (Russian: Ромео и Джульетта, romanized: Romeo i Dzhulyetta), Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev made from the ballet three orchestral suites and a suite for solo piano. |
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| Romeo and Juliet Suite no. 3, op. 101 |
Romeo and Juliet (Russian: Ромео и Джульетта, romanized: Romeo i Dzhulyetta), Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev made from the ballet three orchestral suites and a suite for solo piano. |
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| Russian Overture, op. 72 |
In music, Op. 72 stands for Opus number 72. Compositions that are assigned this number include: Beethoven – Fidelio Dvořák – Slavonic Dances, Series II Klebe – Das Mädchen aus Domrémy Prokofiev – Russian Overture Schumann – Four Fugues (Vier Fugen) for piano Scriabin – Vers la flamme Strauss – Intermezzo |
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| Scythian Suite, op. 20 |
The Scythian Suite, Op. 20 is an orchestral suite by Sergei Prokofiev written in 1915. |
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| Semyon Kotko Op.81 bis | ||
| Sinfonia Concertante in E minor, for cello and orchestra, op. 125 |
Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto in E minor, Op. 125 (also widely referred to as Sinfonia Concertante) is a large-scale work for cello and orchestra. The Symphony-Concerto was premiered on 18 February 1952 by Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom the work was dedicated. It was originally presented as Prokofiev's Second Cello Concerto, but Prokofiev subsequently revised and changed its title. It is among Prokofiev's final completed works. |
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| Sinfonietta in A major, op. 48 |
The Sinfonietta in A major is a composition for orchestra by Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Sinfonietta in A major, op. 5 |
The Sinfonietta in A major is a composition for orchestra by Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Summer Day, op. 65bis |
This is a list of musical compositions by the 20th-century Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Summer Night, op. 123 |
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (27 April [O.S. 15 April] 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument, including his first two piano concertos. In 1915, Prokofiev made a decisive break from the standard composer-pianist category with his orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev—Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son—which, at the time of their original production, all caused a sensation among both critics and colleagues. But Prokofiev's greatest interest was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia. After the Revolution of 1917, Prokofiev left Russia with the approval of Soviet People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, and resided in the United States, then Germany, then Paris, making his living as a composer, pianist and conductor. In 1923 he married a Spanish singer, Carolina (Lina) Codina, with whom he had two sons; they divorced in 1947. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofiev's ballets and operas to be staged in America and Western Europe. Prokofiev, who regarded himself as a composer foremost, resented the time taken by touring as a pianist, and increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for commissions of new music; in 1936, he finally returned to his homeland with his family. His greatest Soviet successes included Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Alexander Nevsky, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, On Guard for Peace, and the Piano Sonatas Nos. 6–8. The Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred Prokofiev to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace; he co-wrote the libretto with Mira Mendelson, his longtime companion and later second wife. In 1948, Prokofiev was attacked for producing "anti-democratic formalism". Nevertheless, he enjoyed personal and artistic support from a new generation of Russian performers, notably Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich: he wrote his Ninth Piano Sonata for the former and his Symphony-Concerto for the latter. |
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| Symphonic Song, op. 57 |
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (27 April [O.S. 15 April] 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument, including his first two piano concertos. In 1915, Prokofiev made a decisive break from the standard composer-pianist category with his orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev—Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son—which, at the time of their original production, all caused a sensation among both critics and colleagues. But Prokofiev's greatest interest was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia. After the Revolution of 1917, Prokofiev left Russia with the approval of Soviet People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, and resided in the United States, then Germany, then Paris, making his living as a composer, pianist and conductor. In 1923 he married a Spanish singer, Carolina (Lina) Codina, with whom he had two sons; they divorced in 1947. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofiev's ballets and operas to be staged in America and Western Europe. Prokofiev, who regarded himself as a composer foremost, resented the time taken by touring as a pianist, and increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for commissions of new music; in 1936, he finally returned to his homeland with his family. His greatest Soviet successes included Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Alexander Nevsky, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, On Guard for Peace, and the Piano Sonatas Nos. 6–8. The Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred Prokofiev to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace; he co-wrote the libretto with Mira Mendelson, his longtime companion and later second wife. In 1948, Prokofiev was attacked for producing "anti-democratic formalism". Nevertheless, he enjoyed personal and artistic support from a new generation of Russian performers, notably Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich: he wrote his Ninth Piano Sonata for the former and his Symphony-Concerto for the latter. |
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| Symphony no. 1 in D, op. 25, "Classical" |
The Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, also known as the Classical, was Sergei Prokofiev's first numbered symphony. He began to compose it in 1916 and completed it on September 10, 1917. It was composed as a modern reinterpretation of the classical style of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The symphony's nickname was bestowed upon it by the composer. It premiered on April 18, 1918, in Petrograd, conducted by Prokofiev. It has remained one of his most popular works. |
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| Symphony no. 2 in D minor, op. 40 |
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40, in Paris in 1924-25, during what he called "nine months of frenzied toil". He characterized this symphony as a work of "iron and steel". |
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| Symphony no. 3 in C minor, op. 44 |
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 44, in 1928. |
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| Symphony no. 5 in B flat major, op. 100 |
Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 5 in B♭ major, Op. 100, in the Soviet Union in one month in the summer of 1944. |
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| Symphony no. 6 in E flat minor, op. 111 |
The Symphony No. 6 in E♭ minor, Op. 111, by Sergei Prokofiev was completed and premiered in 1947. Sketches for the symphony exist as early as from June 1945; Prokofiev had reportedly begun work on it prior to composing his Fifth Symphony. He later remarked that the Sixth memorialized the victims of the Great Patriotic War. Despite the enthusiastic interest of Alexander Gauk, Prokofiev instead chose to have the Sixth's premiere conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, who was impressed by the symphony after the composer played it for him. The premiere, which was played by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra on October 11, 1947, was a success. Initially, the symphony was received very warmly in the Soviet press; it was compared favorably with Dmitri Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony. In 1948, it came under attack during the Zhdanovschina, including from critics who had previously praised it. After Prokofiev's death, the Sixth was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union. It also gained critical favor in the West, where reaction had initially been mixed. According to Tempo, the Sixth is the "great, crowning" work of Prokofiev's symphonic output. |
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| Symphony no. 7 in C sharp minor, op. 131 |
Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 7 in C♯ minor, Op. 131, was completed in 1952, the year before his death. It is his last symphony. |
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| The Love for Three Oranges, op. 33 bis |
Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, in 1912 and completed it the next year. However, that version of the concerto is lost; the score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution. Prokofiev reconstructed the work in 1923, two years after finishing his Piano Concerto No. 3, and declared it to be "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered [Piano Concerto] No. 4." Indeed, its orchestration has features that clearly postdate the 1921 concerto. Performing as soloist, Prokofiev premiered this "No. 2" in Paris on 8 May 1924 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting. It is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April 1913 after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev. |
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| The Year 1941, op. 90 |
Sergei Prokofiev wrote the symphonic suite The Year 1941 (Op. 90) in 1941. |
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| Thirty Years, op. 113 |
This is a list of musical compositions by the 20th-century Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. |
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| Violin Concerto no. 1 in D major, op. 19 |
Sergei Prokofiev began his Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, as a concertino in 1915 but soon abandoned it to work on his opera The Gambler. He returned to the concerto in the summer of 1917. It was premiered on October 18, 1923 at the Paris Opera with Marcel Darrieux playing the violin part and the Paris Opera Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. Igor Stravinsky made his debut as conductor at the same concert, conducting the first performance of his own Octet for Wind Instruments. |
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| Violin Concerto no. 2 in G minor, op. 63 |
The Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63, written in 1935 by Sergei Prokofiev, is a work in three movements: It was premiered on 1 December 1935 at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid by the French violinist Robert Soetens and the Madrid Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Fernández Arbós. Prokofiev wrote it after the first performance, by Soetens and Samuel Dushkin, of his Sonata for Two Violins, which pleased him greatly. Igor Stravinsky had recently written a concerto for Dushkin, and Prokofiev did the same for Soetens. Prokofiev was on a concert tour with Soetens while he was working on the concerto, and he later wrote, "the number of places in which I wrote the Concerto shows the kind of nomadic concert-tour life I led then. The main theme of the 1st movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the 2nd movement at Voronezh, the orchestration was finished in Baku and the premiere was given in Madrid." The Spanish liked the premiere so much that they sent a delegation of musicians to thank Prokofiev afterward. The first two British performances of the concerto were again with Soetens: in 1936 under Sir Henry J. Wood, and in 1938, under the composer. Soetens played the work many times, all over the world, concluding with the premiere performance in South Africa in 1972, when he was 75 (he continued appearing in public until age 95, and died in 1997, aged 100). The concerto is more conventional than the composer's early bold compositions. It starts off with a simple violin melody related to traditional Russian folk music. The second movement's lyrical theme, first played by the soloist, reappears in the orchestra's somber lower register, accompanied by the soloist. The third movement's rondo has a taste of Spain, with the clacking of castanets each time the theme appears. Apart from the solo violin, the concerto is scored for moderate-sized orchestra, including two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, snare drum, bass drum, castanets, cymbals, triangle, and strings. |
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| Waltz Suite, op. 110 |
Sergei Prokofiev composed and compiled his Waltz Suite, Op. 110, during the Soviet Union's post-Great Patriotic War period of 1946–1947. In creating this work for the concert hall, the composer drew upon waltzes previously written for three of his most recent works for the stage and screen: the opera War and Peace (completed circa 1943–1944 but not yet premiered at that time); the ballet Cinderella (stage premiere, 1945); and, lastly, his score to the 1943 Soviet film Lermontov by Albert Gendelshtein and Konstantin Paustovsky. |
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| War and Peace |
War and Peace (Op. 91) (Russian: Война и мир, Voyna i mir) is a 1946 230-minute opera in 13 scenes, plus an overture and an epigraph, by Sergei Prokofiev. Based on the 1869 novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, its Russian libretto was prepared by the composer and Mira Mendelson. The first seven scenes are devoted to peace, the latter six, after the epigraph, to war. Although Tolstoy's work is classified as a novel, the 1812 invasion of Russia by the French was a historical event, and some real-life people appear as characters in both the novel and the opera, e.g. Prince Mikhail Kutuzov and Napoleon Bonaparte. |