Annotated Anthony Phillips Preface Foreword (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. DRAMATIC: ILLUMINATING: INDISPENSABLE: CANDID: VIBRANT: INEXHAUSTIVELY RICH: NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 2006): NEW handsomely-illustrated mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners * 6.26" x 9.48" x 2.06", 1.44 kg, xxviii+836 (864) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: Sergey Prokofiev, a compulsive diarist & gifted & idiosyncratic writer, possessed an incorrigibly sardonic curiosity about individuals & events. When he left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, his diaries were recovered from the family flat in Petrograd & later hidden at considerable personal risk by the composer Nikolai Myaskovsky. Prokofiev himself smuggled them out of the country after his first return to the Soviet Union in 1927. The later diaries, written in the West, were brought back by legal decree after the composer's death in 1953, to be kept in an inaccessible section of the Soviet State Archive. Eventually Prokofiev's son Sviatoslav was allowed to transcribe the voluminous contents. When he & his son Sergei eventually emigrated to Paris, they undertook the gigantic task of reproducing the partially encoded manuscript in an intelligible form. "Diaries, 1907-1914", the first of three volumes that extend to 1933, covers Prokofiev's years at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Simultaneously attached to & exasperated by the tradition exemplified by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, & Tcherepnin, the brash young genius relishes the power of his talent to irritate, challenge, & finally overcome the establishment. In candid & lively prose, he records the all-too-normal preoccupations of a young man making his way in the brilliant social & artistic circles of the prewar Russian capital. Virtually every artist & musician of note appears in these pages, in penetrating & not always flattering vignettes. Prokofiev's main subject, however, is music, its creation & its performance. He reveals his own developing aesthetic principles through his assessments of the works of others, even as he composes such early masterpieces as the "First & Second Piano Concertos", "The Ugly Duckling", the "First Violin Concerto", & the "Classical Symphony". An inexhaustibly rich portrait of a vibrant artistic culture on the edge of war & revolution, Prokofiev's "Diaries" are both a dramatic illumination of a great composer's creativity & an indispensable contribution to our understanding of musical modernism. They constitute an essential and entertaining reference for all lovers of Prokofiev's music. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "It is my good fortune to have been a close acquaintance of the genius Sergey Prokofiev. Before coming to know him personally i knew many of his works & admired him w/o reservation as a composer, but after 1948 & his death we met very frequently indeed. He was a man of unique character: candid, possessed of an exceptionally penetrating wit & deeply held convictions. The publication of his diaries, first in Russian & now in English is a great event. We must be grateful to those who have made this possible & who have thereby revealed to us the life of one of the greatest composers & men of the 20th century." -Mstislav Rostropovich. * ABOUT THE AUTHOR-TRANSLATOR: ANTHONY PHILLIPS is the translator of "Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman, 1941-1975", also from Cornell. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this superb book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL (or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost charge) & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to all international destinations at our posted rates.