Sergey Prokofiev Diaries 1924-1933

Product Description

The third & final volume of Prokofievs Diaries covers the years 1924 to 1933 when he was living in Paris. Intimate accounts of the successes & disappointments of a great creative artist at the heart of the European arts world between the two World Wars jostle with witty & trenchant commentaries on the personalities who made up this world. The Diaries document the complex emotional inner world of a Russian exile uncomfortably aware of the nature of life in Stalins Russia yet increasingly persuaded that his creative gifts would never achieve full maturity separated from the culture people & land of his birthplace. Since even Prokofiev knew that the USSR was hardly the place to commit inner reflections to paper the Diaries come to an end after June 1933 although it would be another three years before he together with his wife & children finally exchanged the free if materially uncertain life of a cosmopolitan Parisian celebrity for Soviet citizenship & the credo of Socialist Realism within which it struggled to straitjacket its artists. Volume Three continues the kaleidoscopic impressions & the stylish language
- Prokofiev was almost as gifted & idiosyncratic a writer as he was a composer
- of its predecessors.