Born into a wealthy family on 23 April 1891 in Sontsovka (a village in the Donetsk region, today in eastern Ukraine), Russian composer Sergei (Sergueï Sergueïvitch) Prokofiev had a privileged upbringing. The only child of an agronomist, he started his music education with his mother, an amateur pianist, and composed his first works for piano, as well as a handful of vocal pieces, from 1896 to 1901. He later took private music theory lessons with Reinhold Glière, before enrolling at the Saint-Petersburg Conservatory in 1904, where he studied with Alexander Winkler and Anna Essipova (piano), Anatoli Liadov (theory and counterpoint), Yasep Vitol (composition), Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov (orchestration), and Alexandre Tcherepnine (conducting). Nonetheless, Prokofiev considered himself to be largely self-taught, through his independent study of scores and presence at performances of contemporary music organised by Alfred Nourok, Walter Nouvel, and Viatcheslav Karatyguine (where he first encountered the music of Reger, d’Indy, Debussy, and Richard Strauss). These evening concerts were also the occasion for Prokofiev to present his own works for piano. The energetic, percussive nature of his playing and the rawness of his musical language captivated progressive-minded members of the audience but repelled conservative ones. In this setting, Prokofiev also performed works by his contemporaries, including Arnold Schoenberg, and notably met Maxime Gorki and Vladimir Maïakovski.

After graduating from the conservatory in 1914 (having been awarded highest honours as a pianist for his performance of his own Piano Concerto No. 1), Prokofiev’s mother offered him a paid trip to London, where he attended performances of Daphnis et Chloé, The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring. Walter Nouvel introduced him to Diaghilev, who commissioned the ballet Ala and Lolly; the project was abandoned, but material from it would later be used in Scythian Suite. Following the revolution in 1917, Prokofiev felt that the political climate was no longer conducive to his professional development, and decided to immigrate to the United States (via Japan). The first performances of his music in New York were met with confusion. However, his Piano Concerto No. 1 and Scythian Suite were well-received in Chicago, the city in which his Piano Concerto No. 3 and the opera The Love for Three Oranges were premiered. Prokofiev’s American period (1918-1922) was interrupted by a sojourn in Paris for the premiere of Chout by the Ballets Russes in 1921. Following a long stay in Ettal (Bavaria), during which he married singer Lina Llubera (a pseudonym; her real name was Carolina Codina), Prokofiev moved to Paris in late 1923. Around this time, he also toured Cuba and Canada, performing his own works. In Paris, he quickly gained acclaim on account of both his virtuosity as a pianist and the idiomatic nature of his compositions. His time there saw the premieres of Violin Concerto No. 1, Piano Sonata No. 5, Piano Concerto No. 2, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, and the ballets Le Pas d’acier and Prodigal Son, among other pieces. However, several of his works, including the Symphony No. 3, did not achieve the success that he had expected. Furthermore, no theatre was willing to produce his opera, The Fiery Angel.

As a consequence, Prokofiev turned his gaze back to his homeland, from which he had been an absentee as opposed to an émigré. His first tour of the USSR in 1927 was a tremendous success. Energised by the momentum of the new state, as well as by its valorisation of culture, he returned to the Soviet Union in 1929 and 1932, composed his first film score (Lieutenant Kijé), and was commissioned by the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre to write Romeo and Juliet (the ballet was ultimately premiered in Brno in the Czech Republic). In May 1936, Prokofiev and his family settled in Moscow. Along with other important artists, he was evacuated in August 1941, not returning until October 1943. The conflict in his homeland inspired the composition of the opera War and Peace, which would not be premiered in its definitive version during the composer’s lifetime. While Prokofiev’s scores following his return to Russia were not exclusively dedicated to the glory of the regime, he was nonetheless willing to satisfy the expectations placed upon Soviet composers at the time, writing educational works (Peter and the Wolf), marches (e.g., Opus 69, 88, and 99), and patriotic cantatas and operas (Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, Zdravitsa, Sémion Kotko, The Story of a Real Man, etc.).

From 1936 to 1938, Prokofiev enjoyed certain freedoms, and was notably allowed to travel abroad. However, following a tour to the West in 1938 (the year in which he composed the score for Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevski, followed three years later by that of Ivan the Terrible), the Soviet authorities confiscated his passport under the pretence of an administrative formality; the document was never returned, making travel outside of the USSR impossible. Named “Artist of the People” in 1947, the regime nonetheless tightened its grip on his activities in early 1948, following the introduction of an “anti-formalism” campaign, initiated by party leader Andrei Jdanov but overseen by Tikhon Khrennikov (leader of the Union of Soviet Composers). With his standing severely damaged by a decree published by the Central Committee on 10 February 1948, Prokofiev was forced to show contrition for his past works. Much of his music was blacklisted, and his catalogue of works was the object of scathing criticism. On 20 February of the same year, his wife Lina (from whom he had separated in 1941 in order to live with Mira Mendelssohn) was arrested, charged with espionage, and sent to a labour camp, where she remained until 1956. This sequence of events, along with his poor health, led Prokofiev to drastically reduce his activities as a composer. On 5 March 1953, in Nikolina Gora (near Moscow), Prokofiev died of a stroke, just one hour prior to the death of Stalin. Pravda only announced his death some six days later. In 1957, the year in which War and Peace was premiered, Prokofiev was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize.