Foreword

What haven’t we yet heard by Prokofiev? His lesser-known folksong arrangements, unpublished childhood piano pieces, and even some partial drafts have all, in recent years, been premiered. With the exception of the sketches for his inchoate World War II orientalist opera Khan Buzai and arcane incidental pieces from his teenage years like the Sokol March, most of Prokofiev’s music has been performed—even music that he himself did not see fit to hear. Little remains unknown. Or so it seems. His operas and ballets, some of his music for film, and even instrumental works exist in different versions, a problem that Rita McAllister tackled in a series of pioneering English-language studies published in, among other venues, the Musical Times. Her scholarship remains essential reading for those interested in entering the tragicomic world of Prokofiev studies. In 2010, McAllister brought the richer-nuanced, better-structured original version of Prokofiev’s operatic masterwork War and Peace—the first version of five in sum—to stages in the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation. Now, she and Christina Guillaumier bring us this volume, a start-to-finish reassessment of Prokofiev’s career.