Prokofiev: Summer’s Day Suite, Op. 65bis

Summer’s Day Suite, Op. 65bis

Sergei Prokofiev

(1891-1953)

For much of the 20^th century contemporary music in the Soviet Union was dominated by two giant figures, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. In the west the two composers were often thought of as linked in style and general outlook in a way rather akin to Debussy and Ravel in the early years of this century. Of course such a notion overlooks important contrasts between those earlier composers, and likewise the two Soviet composers were fundamentally quite unlike each other in a number of important ways. To begin with, Prokofoiev was fifteen years older than Shostakovich, had grown up in the rich artistic climate of early 20^th century tsarist Russian, and quite indifferent to the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution, left the tumult of his homeland behind to spend nearly twenty years in voluntary exile in America and Europe. (By contrast, Shostakovich, a native of Saint Petersburg, witnessed the revolution from the windows of his home, grew up with the Soviet state, was intensely involved in the cross-currents of political activities and ideology to the end of his life – and he knew the world outsider the USSR only in short, carefully “managed” tours abroad as an artistic spokesman for the regime.)

In some respects Prokofiev could be regarded as the lucky one. He had made periodic tours back to his home country from time to time, but only after many attempts by the Soviet authorities to end his residence abroad did he finally yield to their blandishments, returning to live the rest of his life in the USSR. He was 45 years old, had lived a full life in the “outer world,” and must have thought that he could work undisturbed by the pressures which were already tormenting his younger colleague, Dmitri Shostakovich.

His timing could not be worse. The very year that Prokofiev took up residence in Moscow marked the beginning of the “purge trials” which displayed to the world at large the terror and brutality of Stalin’s rule. True, Prokofiev was honoured by the state, there were many commissions and a clearly defined role as an

“artist of the people,” but even he would not be exempt from state oppression. At first enthusiastically in sympathy with the vague ideals of “socialist realism” propounded by party hacks seeking to keep artists in line, he too suffered criticism, indignities of all sorts, and some fearful periods—especially during the last year’s of Stalin’s tyrannical paranoia. (Ironically, Prokofiev, in poor health in the years following World War II, would die on the same day as Josef Stalin!)

It is possible to see a distinct stylistic development in the three principal phases of Prokofiev’s career: dazzling virtuosity and vivid imaginative coloration in the works written before 1920 (mostly in Russia), a drier, more muscular quality (undoubtedly influenced by the work of Stravinsky) in the music composed in Paris, followed by a simpler, often warmly “romantic” element coming to the fore in the music written in the USSR. This less complex, often unabashedly tuneful music is sometimes explained by a need to adhere to the “socialist realism” ideology of the time. In fact, it is actually a renewal of a powerful lyrical element in the composer’s makeup which was quite pronounced even in his earliest works. Unlike Shostakovich, whose music (after his first brush with Stalinist criticism)often exhibited a tortured subjectivity, Prokofiev’s works usually exhibited a direct, almost breezy objectivity, largely removed from tragic introspection, and thus well gauged for the “official optimism” of the Soviet state. Ironically, perhaps his most universally popular work in among Americans is indeed a splendid example of “Socialist realism”: “Peter and the Wolf”!

The Summer Day Suite is based upon a set of piano pieces, Music for children, written in 1935. In 1941 Prokofiev selected seven of these to form an orchestral suite which is characteristically

1. Morning. Opening with a background of woodwind figuration and shimmering string tremolo, a broad, sustained melody sweeps upward from the bass into the upper strings and winds, swelling to richness of sonority, then drifts downward to a quiet conclusion.

2. Tip and run. This sprightly picture of children’s games is a jig-like rondo, filled with lively

pizzicato and spiccato figures, darting into the upper reaches of winds and strings, concluding XXXX

3. Waltz. One of the paradoxes of the Soviet era was that while the trappings of the tsarist past were swept aside, some evocations of that vanished world were were revived and received with official approval. In music this was especially the case with that vivid reminder of 19^th century privilege,

the WALTZ, which enjoyed great popularity in the age of the Five Year Plan! Prokofiev himself composed a surprising number of waltzes, as in the opera WAR AND PEACE, the CINDERELLA ballet, and even the Seventh Symphony. This warmly sentimental movement, filled with swooping melodic figures, leavened with elegant, yet ironic harmonic twists, is an example of this surprising element in the Prokofiev’s later style.

4. Repentance. This title was not explained by Prokofiev – is it perhaps descriptive of the sadness of a child punished for bad behaviour? This darkly-colored, wistful movement consists of several repetitions of a melody of a Slavic folksong character, mostly confined to the lower strings, with contrasting figures in the upper winds.

5. March. Prokofiev excelled in grotesque, mocking march movements---famously so in the case of the March from “Love for Three Oranges.’ This brief bit of brightly-textured, edgy orchestra swagger is a prime example the composer’s prickly musical imagination.

6. Evening. An opening theme for strings and flute becomes more rhythmically pointed, leading to a secondary strain in which a cricket-like figure is heard in castenets, adding an atmospheric touch.

7. The Moon is over the meadows. A reflective andantino, the final movement opens with a sweetly lyrical melody in the flute, exhibiting the tender simplicity which would so memorably characterise Prokofiev’s ROMEO & JULIET ballet several years later. The melody is repeated several times in shifting orchestral colors, heard in the celli and oboes. In a passage suggestive of the composer’s portrait of the young Juliet, the solo horn is heard against a restless pizzicato background, the music soon fading away in a quiet ending.