Sergei Prokofiev
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100
Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka, Ukraine in 1891 and died near Moscow in 1953. He completed this symphony in 1944, though he used some materials that had been composed several years before. Prokofiev led the premiere performance with the Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra in 1945. The score calls for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, piano, harp, timpani, percussion, and strings.
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During World War II, the Soviet government moved its most prominent artists to the countryside, away from all the noise—and danger—of Moscow and Leningrad. Prokofiev spent most of 1944 at a “house of creative work” in Ivanovo, about 150 miles from Moscow, along with Glière (his former teacher), Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, Shostakovich, and others. And “creative work” was what the no-nonsense Prokofiev was all about: while he was at Ivanovo he composed his Eighth Piano Sonata, music for the film Ivan the Terrible, and his Fifth Symphony.

Prokofiev said that he had been working on the Fifth “for several years,” but by that he meant that he had been gathering themes for it in a special notebook. “I always work that way,” he said, “and probably that is why I write so fast. The entire score of the Fifth was written in one month in the summer of 1944; it took another month to orchestrate it.”

The symphony has no program, but Prokofiev said, “I conceived it as a symphony of the grandeur of the human spirit, praising the free and happy man—his strength, his generosity, and the purity of his soul. I did not choose this theme deliberately; it just came into my head and insisted on being expressed.” One shouldn’t make too much of this. Soviet composers learned to attach this kind of boiler-plate rhetoric to their works as an act of self-preservation: better to suggest a fictitious (but politically acceptable) program than to leave the interpretation of a work’s meaning open to the authorities. Even that didn’t always work. In 1948, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and others were denounced by the Soviet government for their music’s “decadent modernist and formalist” tendencies. All were made to publicly apologize for their errors and promise to repent by embracing Soviet Realism as their artistic credo. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony was spared specific condemnation in this purge, and in fact it later won the Stalin Prize.

Prokofiev had learned to tone down his style, too. The fifth has less of the biting dissonance of his early works and more of the lyricism that made Romeo and Juliet so affecting. From the opening motto in the woodwinds—one of those melodies only Prokofiev could write—the first movement is ardently lyrical. This theme is given an austere treatment at first, but it is full of latent power, as will be seen later on. A rather impolite clarinet tune opens the second movement scherzo. This movement has some of the vinegar we expect from Prokofiev, but it is more sarcastic than bitter. The third movement is broad, dense, richly scored, and has a hair-raising climax. After a brief reminiscence of the first movement’s opening motto, the Finale takes off in a whirlwind. As always with this composer, the  melodies take you to unexpected places and the harmonies are both slippery and bracing.

The Fifth Symphony’s premiere was a triumph, but a few days later Prokofiev suffered a concussion in a fall and was never truly healthy again. He continued to compose, but none of his later works would achieve the combination of critical acclaim and popular enthusiasm of the Fifth Symphony.