Sergei Prokofiev — composer with roots in the Russian Empire
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was born on 27 April (15 April, Old Style) 1891 on a rural estate at Sontsovka, in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire, today Sontsivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. His father, Sergei Alexeyevich Prokofiev, an agronomist from a Moscow merchant family, managed the estate; his mother, a capable pianist, taught him, and he was composing by the age of five. Reinhold Glière spent the summers of 1902 and 1903 at Sontsovka teaching him harmony and form.
He entered the St Petersburg Conservatory; his father died in 1910, ending the family's financial support, and on graduating in 1914 he won its Anton Rubinstein Prize with his First Piano Concerto. Before leaving Russia he introduced the Classical Symphony.
In May 1918, after the Revolution, he left the country with the approval of the People's Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, travelling by way of Japan, where he gave recitals, to the United States. His first New York recital took place on 29 October 1918. He lived in America, then Germany and Paris, earning his living as composer, pianist and conductor; The Love for Three Oranges had its premiere in 1921, and for Diaghilev he wrote Chout and the Prodigal Son, choreographed by George Balanchine in 1929. His two sons were born in Paris.
Turning increasingly to the Soviet Union for commissions, he returned regularly and in 1936 settled in Moscow with his family; some accounts date the move to 1935. There he wrote Peter and the Wolf (1936) for the Central Children's Theatre, the ballet Romeo and Juliet, first staged in Brno in 1938, Cinderella (1945), and the scores for Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. He received the Stalin Prize, first in 1943. In 1948 his music was among the works criticised in a Communist Party resolution on music; he later received the prize again.
He died in Moscow of a cerebral haemorrhage on 5 March 1953, aged sixty-one, the same day as Joseph Stalin, and the newspapers barely reported it. He is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.
"Left Russia in May 1918 with the approval of People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, travelling via Japan to the United States; lived in the US, Germany and Paris; settled in Moscow in 1936 (some sources say 1935)."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Sontsovka, Yekaterinoslav Governorate (now Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine)
Born in 1891 at Sontsovka in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire and trained at the St Petersburg Conservatory, he left Russia in 1918 with official permission, lived in the United States, Germany and France, and returned to settle in Moscow in 1936.
Born on his father's estate at Sontsovka in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate; father Sergei Alexeyevich Prokofiev, an agronomist from a Moscow merchant family; his mother, a pianist, gave him his first lessons.
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Sontsovka, Yekaterinoslav Governorate (now Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.