Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 1 - 30 April 1921

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

596-597

text excerpt

Rehearsals started on Monday the 25th. Larionov told me that he had already staged three scenes, but they were in such a dreadful condition that he might just as well have not choreographed them at all. The music was being provided by a pianist called Zemskaya, and it became clear that it was here, in the musical accompaniment, that the main problem lay. The lady had just been given the music and told to work it out as best she could, and then to play it for the rehearsals. She had not the slightest notion of either the music or the tempi, nor of the rhythm nor, most importantly, of the orchestration, so that for example, she would play a solo for three bassoons forte, and an orchestral tutti softly, while the choreography Larionov had devised for the three solo bassoons was an energetic crowd dance and for the orchestral tutti a solo for a single dancer. I found it incredibly that the approach to the musical aspect of a serious artistic enterprise such as Diaghilev's should be distinguished by such cavalier ineptitude. I did hear that in Madrid Stravinsky had made a few suggestions, but as he had done so off the cuff and casually, he had succeeded only in making matters worse (for example in one place he had apparently identified a waltz fragment, whereas in my score there was no such things anywhere).

excerpt from 'Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 1 - 30 April 1921' pp. 596-597 (236 words)

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