Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season March-April 2016 | Page 39

program notes {
Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major

Sergei Prokofiev

Born in Sontsovka, Ukraine, April 23, 1891;
died in Moscow, March 5, 1953

The premiere of Prokofiev’s Symphony
No. 5 in Moscow on January 13, 1945
was an occasion charged with emotion.
The great Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter
vividly recalled the moment as Prokofiev
mounted the podium: “He stood like
a monument on a pedestal. And then,
when [he] had taken his place… and
silence reigned in the hall, artillery salvos
suddenly thundered forth. His baton
was raised. He waited, and began only
after the cannons had stopped. There
was something very significant in this,
something symbolic. It was as if all of
us —including Prokofiev — had reached
some kind of shared turning point.”
Richter’s observation was accurate.
The cannons that interrupted the start of
the Fifth Symphony were celebrating the
news that the Soviet Army was crossing
the Vistula River into the territory of
Nazi Germany. The end of World War
II was now assuredly in sight. The music
that followed this joyful roar proved worthy of the moment, and 40 minutes later,
the audience set off its own explosion.
For with his longest and arguably greatest symphony, Prokofiev had summed up
the mood of the Russian people at this
momentous time in their history with
music that pa