J A N U A R Y

2 0 0 6

35

Born
April 23, 1891, in Sontsovka, in the
Ekaterinoslav district of Ukraine

Died
March 5, 1953, in Moscow

World premiere
January 16, 1916, at the Mariinsky
Theatre, St. Petersburg, the composer
conducting

New York Philharmonic premiere
January 25, 1929, Fritz Reiner, conductor

Most recent New York Philharmonic
performance
November 6, 2001, Kurt Masur,
conductor

Estimated duration
ca. 22 minutes

Scythian Suite

SERGEI PROKOFIEV

Prokofiev had just graduated from the

St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he
studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov (also Stravinsky’s teacher) and
Anatoly Liadov, neither of whom proved
particularly congenial. However, he had
profited greatly from his work with the con-
ductor and composer Nikolai Tcherepnin,
and excelled as a pianist in the studio of
Anna Esipova. The conservatory’s direc-
tor, Alexander Glazunov, considered
Prokofiev to be an unpleasant upstart, but
the conservatory’s faculty disagreed, out-
voted him, and awarded Prokofiev the
Anton Rubinstein Prize, the highest honor
available to a graduating pianist.

As a graduation present from his

mother, Prokofiev was sent on a tour of
western Europe. He happened to reach
London while the Ballets Russes was per-
forming, was introduced to Diaghilev, and
before he knew it found himself being
offered a commission to write a ballet
score for that revered company. The Rite of
Spring had been good to Diaghilev, begin-
ning with the riot that greeted its pre-
miere — a public relations dream, ironical-
ly — and he was thinking that something
along similar lines might repeat that suc-
cess. He had a scenario drawn up, a tale
involving the nomadic Scythian tribes that
rode horses around central Asia for several
hundred years beginning in about the
eighth century B.C.E.

The scenario arrived — its title was Ala

and Lolly, after its two central characters —
and Prokofiev’s music came shortly on its
heels. Unfortunately Diaghilev didn’t like
either and canceled the project. Prokofiev
was understandably disappointed, but he
knew that nothing constructive would
come from harboring ill feelings against
Diaghilev, who was one of the principal
movers and shakers in the arts at that

I

gor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring shook
the cultural world when it was intro-
duced, as a ballet, by Serge Diaghilev’s

Ballets Russes in 1913, and it continued to
reverberate for years. In short order, musi-
cal Europe was treated to quite a few new
works that were clearly born from
Stravinsky’s “pictures of pagan Russia,”
works that celebrated rhythmic ferocity,
riotous abandon, folk-inspired primitivism,
or simple unbridled orchestral sound. One
of the first major scores overtly inspired by
The Rite of Spring followed it by some two
years, and it came from the pen of a fellow
Russian only nine years younger: Sergei
Prokofiev’s ballet score for Ala and Lolly, far
better known under its subsequent title, the
Scythian Suite.

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time. Things were patched up soon
enough, and Diaghilev would go on to
commission — and produce — three bal-
lets from Prokofiev: Chout (The Buffoon,
1921), Le Pas d’acier (The Age of Steel,
1927), and L’Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal
Son, 1929). Further, he dubbed Prokofiev
his “second son”; the title of “first son”
was already taken — by Stravinsky.

The spirit of earthy primitivism con-

veyed in Prokofiev’s score certainly owes a
great deal to The Rite of Spring; and we might
also note that Ala and Lolly’s scenario, which
involves combat against a hostile god in
ancient Russia, mirrors to some extent that
of Stravinsky’s Firebird. In his “short autobi-
ography,” penned many years later,
Prokofiev would acknowledge that he had
already heard The Rite of Spring in a concert
performance by the time he worked on Ala
and Lolly. Although he claimed that he did
not understand Stravinsky’s score at that
time, he allowed that it was “entirely possi-
ble that I was searching for the same
images in my own way.”

Indeed, this work is no simple aping of

Stravinsky. Where Stravinsky’s score thrives

on precise and often transparent textures,
Prokofiev’s bowls over the listener with
brawn. In the end this would not be
Prokofiev’s mature voice either, but it rep-
resents an important stage in his develop-
ment. It is also music well worth hearing,
and if Prokofiev had to accept that it was
not going to make it onto the stage as a
ballet, at least he could be sure it would be
heard as a concert piece. That’s how he
unveiled his score, under the title Scythian
Suite, in 1916, and it’s in that form that it
has gained its status as a concert classic.

Instrumentation:

three flutes (one dou-

bling alto flute) and piccolo, three oboes
and English horn, three clarinets (one
doubling E-flat clarinet) and bass clarinet,
three bassoons and contrabassoon, eight
horns, four trumpets (one doubling pic-
colo trumpet) and one further trumpet ad
libitum, and used in this performance,
four trombones, tuba, timpani, bass
drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine,
snare drum, tam-tam, xylophone, orches-
tra bells, piano, celesta, two harps, and
strings.

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N E W Y O R K P H I L H A R M O N I C

The Story

In 1932 a request from a Viennese musical organization about the scenario of the unproduced

Ala and Lolly — the music of which had long since been repackaged as the Scythian Suite —

prompted this response from Prokofiev’s secretary:

The chief [sun] god, Veles, had a daughter, Ala, a wooden

idol, revered by the people. The enemy god [Chuzhbog] — a

strange, shadowy, nocturnal deity — carried off Ala. In his

nocturnal kingdom, the enemy god tried to take possession

of her, but each time he approached Ala, there fell upon her

a moonbeam, down which came the daughters of the moon,

who defended her and consoled her — and the god of dark-

ness, powerless before the light, was forced to recoil. Lolly,

popular hero, in love with Ala, sets out on a campaign against

the enemy god, to free her. In the course of unequal combat

against the god, the mortal was about to succumb, but the

sun rises on the horizon and with its rays kills the dark god.

Vladimir Vasilchenko’s Scythian Suite (1991)

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