NB. Sorry if this came out a bit late, specifically, a day after his birthday -- I'm such a *** disgrace. And also, please stay tuned for this whole week, because we're going to celebrate again. Only if I ever have all the motivation to get them all done. Sigh, got a lot more work to do, and with a personal achievement to celebrate as well. The sacrifices I have to do for you, ladies and gentlemen... *huff huff
Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) originally made his reputation on piano music. He amassed a large catalog of piano suites through 1918, including nine of his first 32 opus numbers. After that there is a sharp drop-off as he turned to piano sonatas and composition for other instrumental forces.
One habit persisted, though. That was his tendency to recycle music from major projects as piano and orchestral suites. This was particularly true when these projects ran into trouble and seemed unlikely to reach the stage in any foreseeable time. Unfortunately for Prokofiev this happened an uncommonly high proportion of the time, especially after he returned to the Soviet Union around 1935 and became subject to the political demands of the State.
Prokofiev began the ballet Cinderella right after the successful, though long-delayed, first Bolshoi performance of the prior full-length ballet, Romeo and Juliet in 1940. He had not finished Cinderella when, in the summer of 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the U.S.S.R. Prokofiev received word that the Cinderella project was shelved for the duration. Prokofiev turned to more "serious" projects connected with the war effort. But to make some use out of the reams of music he had written already, and to keep interest in the ballet alive, Prokofiev issued two piano suites of movements from the unfinished and unorchestrated ballet.
These magical and sparkling piano suites not only are an effective and entertaining version of music from one of the greatest scores in all of ballet, but are also the most striking continuations of one of the finest and most distinctive bodies of piano music of the twentieth century.
The Three Pieces Op. 95 is the smallest of the three sets of piano pieces Prokofiev transcribed from his ballet Cinderella (1940-44). The other two were comprised of ten pieces (Op. 97) and six pieces (Op. 102). He also derived three suites for orchestra from the ballet (Opp. 107, 108 and 109) and an Adagio (Op. 97a) for cello and piano, a work that is really a transcription of a transcription, since it is taken from the last piece in the Op. 97 set.
What sets the Three Pieces here apart from the other music derived from Cinderella is that they were extracted long before the composer had completed the ballet. Some musicologists have surmised from that fact that they must represent Prokofiev's personal favorites from among the various transcriptions from the ballet.
While the Op. 95 set focused on Cinderella herself, the Op. 97 suite is mostly character dances for other personages in the story. The brevity of the pieces (eight of them are less than two minutes long) and the harmonic style link them directly to the "radical" youthful piano suites such as Sarcasms and or Fugitive Visions.
The Op. 102 collection of six transcriptions was the last of the three sets for piano that Prokofiev extracted from Cinderella, the other two being comprised of ten pieces (Op. 97) and three pieces (Op. 95). He wrote the ballet from 1940-44, during which time he also worked on these transcriptions, as well as other music, including parts of his opera War and Peace, the whole of his orchestral suite, The Year 1941, and the String Quartet No. 2.
This collection of six pieces from Cinderella is without doubt the most substantial of the three sets. It contains not only some of the ballet's most memorable themes but also its darker and more profound music. Many have viewed the work as a light piece, almost on the direct and generally simple level of Peter and the Wolf. Its music, however, goes far deeper in its often-thorny expressive language and complex conflicts than any of his children's works.
(AllMusic)
Please take note that the audio AND the sheet music ARE NOT mine. Change the quality to a minimum of 480p if the video is blurry.
Original audio: classical-music-online.net
Original sheet music: imslp.org
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