Sergei Prokofiev - Svyatoslav Richter. Short meetings

Venue: Memorial apartment of Svyatoslav Richter, st. Bolshaya Bronnaya, 2/6, apt. 58

Curator: Julia De-Klerk, Head of the Department of Musical Culture of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts A.S. Pushkin

Pushkin Museum im. AS Pushkin presents an exhibition dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Prokofiev. The project tells about the meetings of Svyatoslav Richter with the composer, as well as with his work. The exhibition presents works of fine art and archival materials from the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, museums of the Bolshoi, Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky theaters, the State Central Theater Museum named after V.I. A. A. Bakhrushin, the St. Petersburg Museum of Theater and Music, the Russian National Museum of Music, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the Krasnogorsk Archive of Film and Photo Documents, as well as from the funds of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin.

Sergei Prokofiev is one of the classics of Soviet music who returned to his homeland in the mid-1930s, but never became "his own." Svyatoslav Richter was among the first and best interpreters of Prokofiev’s genius, discovering in his music "new beauty", the polarity of images and the element of indomitable movement. In turn, Prokofiev’s works helped the young musician, brought up in German and Russian classics, to feel a taste for modern music, to master the difficult language of the 20th century.

The exhibition consists of several sections dedicated to key events in the biographies of the musicians, when their paths crossed, starting with Prokofiev’s first tour of Russia in 1927 and ending with the last Moscow concerts of the 1950s. The exposition opens with materials dedicated to the premiere of Prokofiev’s opera "The Love for Three Oranges" (1926-1927), the composer’s tours, as well as Richter’s childhood in Odessa, when he first saw the young Prokofiev, as if he had stepped off the futuristic "cover of Three Oranges", - either a magician or a character from Hoffmann. "

The next milestone was the time of Richter’s studies at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Heinrich Neuhaus, meetings with Prokofiev in the house on Chkalov Street, and most importantly, the first public performances with piano sonata No. 6 (op. 82) and piano concerto No. 5 (op. 55) under management of the author (1937-1940). These significant events for Richter coincide with the legendary productions of Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet in Leningrad and the opera Semyon Kotko in Moscow. Richter recalled: "The evening when I first heard" Semyon Kotko ", I realized that Prokofiev is a great composer." At the exhibition you can see sketches by Pyotr Williams for the first production of the ballet Romeo and Juliet (State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet named after S. M. Kirov, January 1940) and sketches by Alexander Tyshler for the premiere of the opera Semyon Kotko (Stanislavsky Musical Theater, June 1940).

The central section of the exhibition is devoted to wartime, when Prokofiev’s genius reached "Olympic heights". It was at this time that a triad of piano sonatas, masterpieces of chamber instrumental music, the Fifth Symphony, the ballet "Cinderella" were written, the film "Ivan the Terrible" was created together with Sergei Eisenstein and, finally, the monumental canvas - the opera "War and Peace". Richter was not only a witness to the composer’s triumphs, but also a direct participant in them. During the war years, the fame of the pianist grew, winning in 1945 at the All-Union Competition for Young Performers. The exhibition shows rare archival photographs and manuscripts, for the first time you can see sketches by Vladimir Dmitriev and Theodora Schorr for the Leningrad premiere of the opera War and Peace (MALEGOT, 1946), as well as sketches of Boris Erdman’s scenery for the ballet Cinderella (S. M. Kirov, 1946).A separate showcase is occupied by Sergei Eisenstein’s brilliant drawings for the film "Ivan the Terrible".

Since 1946, for Prokofiev, "the last action of his life began… Perhaps the highest… but the last." This bright and at the same time sad finale is associated with Prokofiev’s stay at the dacha on Nikolina Gora, where Richter came to him alone and with Mstislav Rostropovich, where he received a manuscript of the Ninth Sonata as a gift from the composer, and for the first time celebrated his birthday with the author in the company of loyal friends. The years of close communication were overshadowed by the unfolding campaign to combat formalism and the serious illness of Prokofiev, who in April 1952 listened for the last time to Richter performing his works at the Moscow Conservatory. The composer managed to bless his beloved pianist, instructing him to conduct the premiere of Concertino for cello and orchestra, in which Mstislav Rostropovich was the soloist (Moscow, February 18, 1952).Richter learned about Prokofiev’s death on tour in Tbilisi.

The exhibition presents a pencil autograph of the Ninth Piano Sonata, memorial things, letters and telegrams, rare records and music editions, portraits of Richter and Prokofiev, made in different years by Gleb Deryuzhinsky, Robert Falk, Anna Troyanovskaya, Zinaida Serebryakova, Pyotr Konchalovsky, as well as friends caricatures of the Kukryniksy.

Three multimedia films based on rare archival materials have been prepared specially for the opening; they complement the content of the exhibition and recreate the atmosphere of the 1920s and 1950s.

Department of Musical Culture of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts A.S. Pushkin was established in 1999. This event, as a result of many years of friendly and creative contacts between I.A. the creation of the Svyatoslav Richter Memorial Apartment in 1997. Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova was the first who decided to implement the idea of the synthesis of arts in the space of the museum, thus reflecting the main vector of the development of the 20th century culture. Today the department of musical culture prepares a variety of programs and projects: research, educational, exhibition and concert, both in the Memorial apartment of Svyatoslav Richter, and in the halls of the Pushkin Museum. A. With Pushkin.