I’m rather indifferent to Prokofiev’s music now and listen to his compositions without any particular pleasure. I suppose The Gambler is the opera of his that I like the most, but even it has too many superficial random effects, Prokofiev sacrificed essential things too often for a flashy effect. You see it in The Flaming Angel and in War and Peace. I listen, and remain unmoved now. Once it was different; but that was a long time ago. And then my infatuation with Mahler pushed Stravinsky and certainly Prokofiev into the background. Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky insisted that Mahler and Prokofiev were incompatible.