NIKOLAY MYASKOVSKY & SERGEI PROKOFIEV: A LIFELONG DIALOGUE

Description

“You and I are mutually reassuring to each other,” the young Sergei Prokofiev concluded in his letter to Nikolay Myaskovsky. When they first met at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, the latter was already a mature 25-year-old military engineer, while Prokofiev – a phenomenally gifted 15-year-old teenager. Despite the age difference, they quickly made friends having a peculiar faith in each other, and agreed to submit every new composition to each other's judgment.

That is how a life-long correspondence between them started. It lasted for 43 years, notwithstanding the distance, political infringements or other vicissitudes of fate separating the two friends. Their letters convey the warmth of friendship of the two greats. They invariably begin with tenderly ironic addresses: “The light of my eyes”, “My lovely”, “My dear lieutenant”, “Dear angel”, and combined with affectionate nicknames of Sergusha, Seryozhenka, Kolechka, Nyamochka...

Only to Prokofiev could Myaskovsky confide with a self-deprecation that his romances to the Blok’s poems “were being composed very tediously” or that Sergei must certainly scold his Fourth Sonata for “an unpretentious finale and somewhat rotten Intermezzo”. However, in response, he received the words of support from Prokofiev both regarding the romances, which “I often play and melt over them,” and about the Sonata, in which “I really liked the middle movement”. Introverted philosophical, restless Myaskovsky needed not only such words, but also the energetic and invigorating creativity of his friend: "It is still worth living in the world while such music is being composed!"

The concert programme will continue this lifelong dialogue into the new century. It will depict the amazing harmony in the epistolary, piano and vocal compositions of these two contrasting creative personalities.