Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 5 January 1920

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text excerpt

In the evening I went to the premiere of Ravel's L'heure espagnole and ran Johnson to earth in his office. He asked me to come to see him tomorrow at three o'clock.

L'heure espagnole is typical Ravel: diffuse, liquescent, elegant, wonderful-sounding, often very witty. The subject is frivolous, insipid, and in choosing it as a subject Ravel sometimes miscalculates: in places he is too slow and lags behind the jokes; and elsewhere, when he pastiches banality, he can produce, if you like, too elegant a banality, and this one should not do.

But in general Ravel's music is beautiful, and of course on second hearing I was able to appreciate much that had slipped past unnoticed the first time.

excerpt from 'Sergey Prokofiev diaries: 5 January 1920' pp. 458 (119 words)

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