Vasily Petrenko
Nobuyuki Tsujii Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) quickly gained a reputation in St. Petersburg’s musical circles as a rebellious yet immensely talented figure. After the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1913, one critic wrote that the audience was paralyzed with fear, their hair standing on end as they booed—yet predicted that within ten years, everyone would have to applaud a composer already gaining recognition across Europe.

Prokofiev left Russia during the 1917 Revolution, and the manuscript of Piano Concerto No. 2 was later lost in a fire. In 1923, he reconstructed the concerto from memory, significantly altering it in the process. The version we know today, premiered in Paris in 1924, stands as one of the 20th century’s most intense and technically formidable piano concertos.

Between 1918 and 1920, Prokofiev lived in New York, where in late 1919 he began work on one of his most ambitious projects: the opera The Fiery Angel, based on a novel by Russian writer Valery Bryusov. Set in 17th-century Germany, the story unfolds as a dramatic love triangle against a backdrop of mysticism, fanaticism, and witch trials.

Prokofiev worked on the opera for eight years, but plans for a Berlin production fell through, and he never saw it performed on stage. In the summer of 1928, he reworked the material into a symphony, which premiered in Paris the following year. In Symphony No. 3, the music’s electrifying energy and refined mysticism shine through, making it one of Prokofiev’s most popular symphonies.