Sunday Classics: The younger Prokofiev could be quite a cut-up

Thanks to poster AlecGuinnessFan, it's possible to see the whole of The Horse's Mouth, Ronald Neame's 1958 adaptation of Joyce Cary's 1944 novel, for which Guinness wrote the screenplay as well as starring as the desperately and rather despicably struggling artist Gully Jimson. The film makes spectacular use of Prokofiev's Lt. Kijé music, in particular "Kijé's Wedding" and the "Troika."

by Ken

One thing about creative geniuses is that they tend to be unpredictable. It's possible to be extremely talented and concoct highly satisfying creations that don't really surprise anyone. But at the genius level, not only the audience but the creator often doesn't know what's coming next.

I think of the great Alfred Hitchcock, so well known to us as the supreme film master of psychological mayhem. Who would expect among so many spine-tingling chillers to find a comic masterpiece like The Trouble with Harry, a sweetly autumnal (literally -- it's steeped in the colors of a New England autumn) romance that centers around an inconvenient corpse that keeps turning up in the most distressing places and situations. You see, Harry's "problem" -- and I have to risk spoiling it in case you didn't already know -- is that he's dead. Unmourned, but just so damned inconveniently so.

Lieutenant Kijé, in Yury Tynyanov's satirical novel (1927), set in the reign of Tsar Paul I (1796-1801), and Alesander Faintsimmer's film adaptation (1934) has a possibly even more existentially distressing problem: He doesn't exist. I confess that I've never read the book or seen the film, but Kij&eactue; is a central part of my imaginative reality, thanks to an incontestably brilliant decision Faintsimmer made: having Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) composer the film score.

As usual, Prokofiev was averse to letting music he'd written go to waste, and he soon created the "symphonic suite" that remains one of his most-loved works, which I offered as a prime example of "musical funny business," along with another beautiful and witty orchestral suite with which it was often, and happily, paired on LP, Zoltán Kodály's Háry János (drawn from a theatrical piece that is somewhere between a play with lots of incidental music and an opera). We've already taken a closer look at Háry János; today we return to Kijé.

Naturally I thought of The Horse's Mouth, for which Prokofiev's Kijé score. Am I the only one who's wondered whether the picture would be even watchable without the brilliantly used music?

Wikipedia offers a usable synopsis of the Kijé Suite:

The suite, in five movements broadly follows the plot:

1. "Kijé's Birth." Emperor Paul, listening to a report, mishears a phrase and concludes that the lieutenant exists. He demands that "Kijé" be promoted to his elite guard. It is an offence to contradict the Tsar, so the palace administrators must invent someone of that name.

2. "Romance." The fictional lieutenant falls in love.

3. "Kijé's Wedding." Since the Tsar prefers his heroic soldiers to be married, the administrators concoct a fake wedding. The vodka that the Tsar approves for this event is very real.

4. "Troika." [A troika is both "a sled or carriage drawn by three horses harnessed side-by-side" and a folk dance.]

5. "Kijé's Burial." The administrators finally rid themselves of the non-existent lieutenant by saying he has died. The Tsar expresses his sadness, and the civil servants heave a sigh of relief.

Here then is the whole of the brilliant performance we've sampled by Klaus Tennstedt.

PROKOFIEV: Lt. Kijé: Symphonic Suite, Op. 60


London Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded c 1983

A wickedly impudent sense of humor was one of the things Prokofiev took with him when he left the newly created Soviet Union in 1918. He seems never to have had any head for or interest in politics (and he would pay for it); the messy business of the Russian Revolution seems to have been mostly an inconvenience. But he seems to have known that as a not-so-young-anymore young man and a developing creative artist, he felt stifled.

Things started well, and he quickly secured a commission from the Chicago Opera for what eventually became the comic-opera masterpiece The Love for Three Oranges. All sorts of difficulties set in then, including serious health problems and bare-knuckle negotiations with the Chicago management, but in 1921 the opera reached the stage. It didn't set the world on fire, that may be because the musical establishment wasn't looking for salvation in the form of this hilarious satirical fantasy.

Love for Three Oranges, which we looked at briefly in last night's preview, has all sorts of fantastical things going on in it but is first of all a tribute to the stock-character tradition of the old commedia dell'arte, which intersects deliciously and crazily with a network of prime-for-parody Russian folk and intellectual traditions. As with most great comedies, the more seriously the performers take it, the funnier it can be. For example, the Prince's dreaded illness, and his father the King of Clubs's desperate concern, only becomes really funny if everyone involved, both on and off the stage, believes that it's genuinely life-threatening. Of course most opera companies prefer to key their level of comedy to a backward five-year-old.

Last night we sampled the opera's buried-treasure nugget: the little March that Prokofiev seems to have regarded as a virtual throwaway, but that became probably his best-known bit of music. It's an inspiration that the composer seems originally to have regarded as a virtual throwaway -- it lasts barely a minute and a half. Why don't we listen again to the versions we heard last night?

PROKOFIEV: March from The Love for Three Oranges

arranged for solo piano by Arthur Rubinstein

Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA/BMG, recorded March 23, 1961

arranged for violin and piano by Jascha Heifetz

Jascha Heifetz, violin; Emanuel Bay, piano. Decca/MCA/Universal, recorded Nov. 30, 1945


Gil Shaham, violin; Orli Shaham, piano. Vanguard/Artemis, recorded c2003

And then the orchestral arrangement Prokofiev made for his Love for Three Oranges Suite.

PROKOFIEV: The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Op. 33bis:
No. 3, March


Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, cond. Finlandia, recorded September 1996

Now, last night we saw a clip from the Glyndebourne production of Love for Three Oranges designed by Maurice Sendak and staged by Frank Corsaro which showed us how the March leads into Act II, Scene 2, in which the poor Prince has been literally carried to the palace courtyard to be cheered up by the series of entertainments his father has commissioned from Truffaldino. Today I thought it might he fun to hear the scene, Act II, Scene 1, out of which the March emerges. We're going to hear it twice, in fact, first in French, the language in which it was originally written, and then in Russian, into which it was of course translated. I'm not sure it's fair to call them different "versions," but in fact they sound to me almost like different operas, with quite different performing traditions.

PROKOFIEV: The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33:
Act II, Scene 1

In the Prince's bedroom, Truffaldino ("a man who makes people laugh") tries to persuade the invalid Prince to get dressed to attend the grand entertainments he has arranged for him, which are already beginning, but the Prince finds the idea of getting dressed completely mad. Truffaldino's promise of laughter produces a coughing fit from the Prince and an intervention by the party of comedy-favoring Comicals from the Prologue, who have been watching the action, and are now silenced by the order-enforcing Eccentrics. The Prince begs for his numerous medicines, which Truffaldino instead one by one chucks out the window. As the Prince wails that he's dying, Truffaldino wraps his cloak around and lifts him bodily as the March begins [about 5:20 of the Russian performance, 5:29 of the French], transporting the audience as well as the two characters to the great courtyard of the palace for Truffaldino's festivities.

1. In French:


Georges Gautier (t), Truffaldino; Jean-Luc Viala (t), the Prince; Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon, Kent Nagano, cond. Virgin Classics, recorded March 30-Apr. 7, 1989

2. In Russian:


Konstantin Pluzhnikov (t), Truffaldino; Yevgeny Akimov (t), the Prince; Kirov Chorus and Orchestra of the Maryinsky Theater, St. Petersburg, Valery Gergiev, cond. Philips, recorded live in the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Nov. 1997 and Sept. 1998

And just to get a fuller sense of this sparkling opera, let's listen again to the suite, only in a different performance.

PROKOFIEV: The Love for Three Oranges: Suite, Op. 33bis

i. Les Ridicules ("The Ridiculous Ones" -- the squad of enforcers who break up the onstage riot in the Prologue)
ii. Infernal Scene: Chelio the Magician and Fata Morgana Play Cards
iii. March
iv. Scherzo
v. The Prince and Princess
vi. Flight


Minnesota Orchestra, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, cond. Vox, recorded 1977


PROKOFIEV'S CLASSICAL SYMPHONY

Finally, I don't see how we can leave the subject of the "comic" Prokofiev without taking account of the Classical Symphony of 1916-17, the first of the composer's seven symphonies. It's neither "ha-ha funny" nor an imitation of a classical symphony, but more of a droll mimickry of what a classical symphony might sound like if old-style forms were filled out with then-contemporary musical sensibilities. It's a hard work to perform than one one might imagine -- or than many conductors seem to realize. It has to be performed fully, with condescension or mincing, and yet with appropriate appreciation of its wit and attention to both its polish and its rhythmic propulsion.

PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 1 in D, Op. 25 (Classical)

i. Allegro

Orchestre National de l'ORTF, Jean Martinon, cond. Vox, recorded c 1971

ii. Larghetto

Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded c 1978

iii. Gavotta: Non troppo allegro

London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, cond. Philips, recorded May 1-2, 2004

iv. Finale: Molto vivace

Orchestre National de France, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded c 1984

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