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HIGH FIDELITY RECORDING

Orchestral Suite from

EMYON KOTKO,” Op. 81a

SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF RADIO BERLIN

ROLF KLEINERT, Conductor

For a composer who wrote rather extensively for the

stage and motion pictures, and one who left behind him

well over a hundred published works, Sergei Prokofieft

has remarkably few operas to his credit. Only one of these,

The Love for Three Oranges, has become at all familiar

in America, and that had its world premiere in Chicago

back in 1921. There have been several attempts to produce

his largest-scale opera, War and Peace, in this country, but

at this writing they have been unsuccessful.

Opera never appealed too strongly to Prokofieff. He was

openly opposed to many of the operatic traditions of the

past —— libretti in verse and so-called ‘‘set’” pieces, such

as arias, duets and choruses. When he came to write The

Gambler, War and Peace and Semyon Kotko, he employed

prose texts almost exclusively.

One suspects, too, that Prokofieff was not fond of

composing on Soviet themes. It took the Second World

War to make him at all nationalistic in his musical outlook.

In 1939 he took two resounding slaps at the Germans. The

first was his Cantata Alexander Nevsky, fashioned from

his score for Sergei Eisenstein’s film of the same name,

which depicted the fierce battle between the people of

Novgorod against the invading Knights of the Teutonic

Order in 1242. The second was Semyon Kotko, an operatic

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retelling of the Civil War in the Ukraine and the uprising against the Germans in 1918.

Both Alexander Nevsky and Semyon Kotko are fraught with brutal episodes — violent battle scenes, oppression, fire, death, suffering of all kinds. For these scenes Prokofieff has created music of great power — often brutality. Where- as in many of his earlier works, dissonance was used for sarcastic or sensational effects, the modern harmonies here

take on new and greater meaning. Furthermore, they are relieved by many passages of lyric tenderness, melodies with an original twist such as only Prokofieff knew how to write.

Alexander Nevsky and Semyon Kotko were composed during the same year — 1939 — an extremely fruitful one for Prokofieff. In addition to these two works, he wrote the cantata Zdravitsa for Stalin’s sixtieth birthday, and made sketches for his Violin Sonata, Op. 80, and his Piano Sonatas No. 6, Op. 82; No. 7, Op. 83, and No. 8, Op. 84. 1939 also saw the Russian premiere of his ballet Romeo and Juliet.

Throughout the ensuing season, Prokofieff worked on preparations for the production of Semyon Kotko. The opera received its initial performance at the end of June, 1940, at the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, with M. Zhukov conducting. Almost immediately, it aroused a storm of controversy. Its adherents called it the first real Soviet opera, while its opponents attacked it for its “Western formalism’? — a thrice-familiar and much over- worked phrase employed by Soviet critics. Further attacks were leveled against it in December of that year by the All-Union Opera Conference. Outwardly, at least, Proko- fieff remained impervious to these assaults. As was also to be the case in later years, he continued to compose in his own way, certain that he knew how and what to write without the advice or censure of any state-controlled critic.

Among the new works was the ballet Cinderella; an- other opera, Betrothal in a Convent — also known as The Duenna — and the Symphonic Suite from Semyon Kotko, recorded here. Completed in 1941, the Suite was not heard until December 23, 1943, when it was presented in Moscow. The American premiere of the Suite was given by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner con- ducting, on October 19, 1945.

Semyon Kotko was first called I, Son of the Working People, from the novel by Valentin Katayev, who also wrote the opera’s libretto. Its central character is Semyon Kotko, » Ukrainian partisan, who led his fellow villagers against the invading Germans. In order to lend appropriate color to the score, Prokofieff made an intensive study of Ukrainian folk songs. In some instances, he quoted these melodies directly, in others he devised his own themes, modeling them after the Ukrainian originals.

The eight movements that comprise the Symphonic Suite from Semyon Kotko are entitled, respectively: Intro- duction, Semyon and his Mother, The Betrothal, Southern Night, The Execution, The Burning Village, The Funeral, and Our Folks Came.

— Notes by PAUL AFFELDER

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ROLF KLEINERT conductor

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SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF RADIO BERLIN

ROLF KLEINERT conductor

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