Prokofiev and Stravinsky
At once an innovator who delighted to offend and a traditionalist who
hankered afer simler, clearer melodies, Sergei Prokofiev is less easily
pigeon-holed than his great Russian contemporary, Igor Stravinsky, the
assured, cosmopolitan, Picasso-like figure of 20th-century mkusc. He and
Stravinsky were friends of a sort, but the relationship was never an easy
one although it endured for thirty years, beginning with Prokofiev's first
concert in St. Petersburg, December 1908. (The two only lost direct
contact in the late 1930s after Prokofiev's permanent return to Russia.)
Stravinsky professed to find Prokofiev talented but superficial,
"astonishingly naive in matters of musical construction". Nor did
Stravinsky ever stop speaking badly about the work of his younger
colleague. As for Prokofiev's rapprochement with Moscow (in part,
surely, his conscious/unconscious means of escape from a blind alley of
Stravinsky-smulation), Igor had it marked down as "a sacrifice to the bitch
goddes, and nothing else". For his part, Prokofiev's undying admiration
wilted a little as the vigorous national colour of sk's Le Sacre du
printemps and Les Noces gave way to the cooler, less engaged
style we find in such works as the Violin Concerto: "The music is Bach but
with pockmarks", Prokofiev fumed. Even so, for as long as both men were
free to travel, they might still meet for an exchange of indecent stories
over dinner, each influencing the musical perceptions of the other to some
degree.
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