Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4 is actually two works, both using material created for The Prodigal Son ballet. The first, Op. 47, was completed in 1930 and premiered that November; it lasts about 22 minutes. The second, Op. 112, is too different to be termed...

REPRINT SERIES The Prodigal Son, or Le Fils prodigue (L'enfant prodigue), Op. 46 (Russian: Блудный сын) is a ballet created for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes by George Balanchine to music by Sergei Prokofiev (1928–29). The libretto, based on the...

The music derives from Prokofiev's opera The Fiery Angel, a touching love story set against the backdrop of demonic possession.This opera had been accepted for performance in the 1927–28 season at the Berlin State Opera by Bruno Walter, but this...

REPRINT SERIES 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". Prokofiev modeled the symphony's structure on...

REPRINT SERIES   After he departed the Soviet Union in 1918, Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) spent a fair amount of time in the U.S. concertizing. On one such tour in 1930, the Library of Congress commissioned him to compose a string quartet; the...

REPRINT SERIES The Stone Flower was the last of Prokofiev’s Soviet ballets, dating from 1948, and is based on a folk tale from the Urals. The Suite contains music of great beauty, with soaring tunes that are as memorable as anything in the two...

Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5, Op. 100, is his biggest, his grandest, and his greatest symphony, a massive and monumental work that celebrates the triumph of all that is decent and virtuous over all that is depraved and immoral. Fourteen years had passed...