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SERGEI PROKOFIEV: BAD BOY OF THE KEYBOARD
An Interview with Recording Artist Barbara Nissman

By Christopher M. Wright
  © 2008 Christopher M. Wright
  All Rights Reserved

AMAZON LINKS BELOW

"My chief virtue (or, if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices."

Sergei Prokofiev blazed his own trail, a path we follow in the interview below with concert pianist, author, and recognized Prokofiev scholar Barbara Nissman. Her recordings of the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas were the first available on CD. She was invited by the Soviet Union to take part in a collaborative study of Prokofiev's manuscripts held in the state archives. Soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and other world-class symphonies, Nissman recently appeared on-stage at Lincoln Center in a fundraiser for Walden Woods with pop artists Don Henley of the Eagles and Billy Joel. Holder of a doctorate in music from the University of Michigan, she is working on a book about Prokofiev.

The interview below takes Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 2 as the point of departure for a free-wheeling excursion through Prokofiev's life and music.

AIM: You just got back from a recording session. What's your latest project?

Nissman: We recorded two CDs in two and a half days. Pierian Records, the label I record for, has started a new series with me of recital favorites. What's wonderful is that I don't have to confine myself to one composer, so I recorded the Liszt Sonata again, along with the Beethoven Opus 106 Hammerklavier Sonata and some Ravel, Scriabin, and Bach, plus other favorites. There'll be ten volumes, so I'll get a chance to do all the repertoire I've always wanted to do. Each disc will be like a 74-minute recital, complete with encore, a format I think people will find enjoyable.

AIM: I was initially attracted to Prokofiev's second Piano Sonata by the motor rhythms in the second movement - very catchy. People whose main experience with music is rock'n'roll might find this a good place to begin exploring Prokofiev's music. What do you think?

Nissman: Rock'n'roll repeats the same rhythm constantly and it gets under your skin. I call any music with repeated rhythms 'gut music' because it overwhelms you and, you're right, it's a very important element in Prokofiev's music. His music has a propulsive energy that generates excitement. It's very accessible and hypnotic. The more you hear it, the more exciting it gets, especially that second movement. I think most classical music, once it's explained and people's ears are focused, is simple enough that anybody can understand it and relate to it.

AIM: How would you describe the second Sonata and all nine as a group?

Nissman: The second is Prokofiev's first mature sonata. He wrote it six years after his first Sonata, which was a youthful work in the romantic style of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. I would say the second Sonata is Prokofiev's first defining work; it's him coming into his own. It's the beginning of his journey with the piano sonata. All the elements of his mature style are present and they will culminate in his masterwork for the piano, the War Sonatas [numbers 6-8]. The second Sonata is still very classically oriented and well-proportioned. It follows the traditional classical sonata form. I hear the influence of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven throughout, whereas the later ones are much more Lisztian - except for the fifth, written in Paris and definitely influenced by Stravinsky's style. It was an experiment that did not work. I call the fifth the black sheep of all the sonatas. He returned to his natural pianism with the War Sonatas. The ninth, a much leaner work than the others seems to be written by a man who has lived his life and wants to leave only the essentials in place. It is beautiful in its simplicity.

AIM: I read a biography. Apparently he was not well in his final years and really slowed down. The last pieces he wrote were not like the fiery, pounding percussive works of his prime.

Nissman: Yes, but it's also a sign of maturity and introspection - the older person looking back and reviewing his life. The ninth Sonata is a magnificent piece; it just doesn't have the pianistic bravura of the earlier ones. That introspection, you already see emerging in the eighth Sonata.

AIM: There are parts of the second Sonata that strike me as having been written by a madman. Words like 'zany' and 'madcap' occur to me, and I get a mental picture of a child running around loose and having a riotous good time. How would you describe the spirit of this piece?

Nissman: My reaction is similar, but I would put it in different words. I wouldn't call it 'madcap', but I am attracted to this composer because of his joie de vivre, his love of life. And I agree, there's a wonderful sense of child-like innocence - you hear it throughout this work. It's the bad boy of the keyboard showing off in that second movement. When I get to the contrasting middle section in that movement, I always think of the elephant meeting the mouse, with the mouse scampering away and the elephant chasing after. So, the slow third movement aside, there's a wonderful spirit of play and flirtatiousness throughout. Prokofiev really loved life. He loved chess, he loved his friends, and he had such a sense of adventure.

AIM: As for the child-like aspect, this is the man who wrote both music and story for Peter and the Wolf, after all. How does your interpretation of the second Sonata differ from other recording artists who have attempted it?

Nissman: I see Prokofiev as a continuation of the 19th century. He's his own man, but he built upon the foundations of romantic pianism. I don't see him as cold and hard and jagged like some people say. To me, he's a supreme melodist and I really appreciate the lyricism of his lines. I guess people would say I have a very romantic approach to Prokofiev's sonatas but the music cries out to me for that approach. The second has all the emotional ingredients you would want to find in any masterpiece and it wears well. I love returning to it and rediscovering what a masterpiece it is!

AIM: Your comments remind me of the way people talk about Bach. Some people say 'Bach leaves me cold, it sounds like a sewing machine' and other people say 'no, you've listened to the wrong recordings and missed the whole
point.'

Nissman: Prokofiev always used to say 'why don't they think I'm lyrical? Of course I'm lyrical.' His lyricism was so misunderstood. The second theme in the first movement of the second Sonata is like a Chopin nocturne.

AIM: When I first heard that second theme (m.64), I was just blown away, it's that ravishing. He brings it back and develops it at later points.

Nissman: I was drawn to it, also. It's very haunting. He uses pieces of it in different ways to flesh out the development section. And it stays with you, so it's a very effective dramatic device when he brings it back at the end in the finale. There's a feeling of nostalgia, remembrance of the past, and it also ties everything together. It's what makes this a masterpiece of form; it's such a wonderfully tight structure, but Prokofiev like Beethoven knew how to stretch the form and make it his own. His craftsmanship is superb but, it's so naturally achieved. He didn't have an academic bone in his body - no way was he going to follow anyone else's rules.

AIM: There are people who sneer at melody and think that anyone like Prokofiev who can write an enjoyable tune shouldn't be taken seriously as a composer. George Gershwin got the same bad rap.

Nissman: Prokofiev was not a lightweight in any respect. The cases are similar - Prokofiev and Gershwin. Both were natural composers who didn't need to be taught. Gershwin wasn't musically educated or classically trained, but he kept taking lessons from academics thinking they could help him compose better. He just didn't realize that what he had was so God-given and I really think the same is true of Prokofiev. He had a divine gift of melody. Nobody can teach one how to do that.

AIM: Many critics did not like the second Sonata, considering it primitive and clumsy. One called it "stupid, inane, and blockheaded." Another wrote: "The finale of the Second Sonata reminds one of a herd of mammoths charging across an Asiatic plateau....." Why the disdain at the time?

Nissman: The avant-garde embraced his music but, by and large, this is a composer who was misunderstood, especially in his youth. He was such a natural talent, he followed his nose. Nobody ever dictated to him how to write and he wasn't a member of any school of thought or academic theory. His music went where he thought it was supposed to go. You couldn't put him in a box. Some people thought he was conservative but others thought he was too way out there. I think his unique approach to the instrument - his sense of originality - frightened a lot of people, especially the critics who had no idea in which box to put him.

AIM: The second Sonata sounded very modern to me when I first heard it. But when I started looking into it, I found some very conservative ingredients. It's in a recognizable key; it uses familiar chords and scalar melodies; sections finish off squarely in tonal cadences; it proceeds in symmetrical antecedent and consequent phrases; and, as you mentioned, he follows the traditional theme-and-development sonata form as handed down from Beethoven. How did he get such radical results from such conservative ingredients?

Nissman: There's a process of uncovering the many layers when you work on a piece in order to get deeper and closer to the meaning and the composer¹s intention. With Prokofiev's music you start with the pianistic complexity and, as you pull away each of the layers, you arrive at the simple core ­ the basic elements upon which the piece is built. Prokofiev uses traditional tonal harmony but he makes it into his own personal language. He uses the past to create something of the future, that's the way I see him. He spices things up in his own way with his own dissonance but, when you strip away the dissonance, you're left with traditional harmonies and Alberti basses that you could find in Mozart [broken chord or arpeggiated accompaniment]. It's what I was saying about being an individual and making something your own.

AIM: I wonder what Prokofiev might have accomplished had he not voluntarily decided to return to Russia and live under the heel of the Soviet boot. But some say life in Russia made his music what it is, the jokes on the apparatchiks and all. What trajectory do you think his career might have followed had he stayed in the West?

Nissman: I think the decision to go back to his homeland was inevitable. He did it for musical reasons, not political reasons. His years in Paris were not happy ones. He was constantly in the shadow of Stravinsky and he knew he could get his operas staged in Russia more easily. Like all composers, he wanted his pieces to be heard. These are the reasons he went back. Plus, for any artist in a foreign country, there's a danger of losing your own voice. I think Prokofiev felt that. He was Russian through and through and he went back to the Soviet Union as a Russian composer. That would prove difficult later on but, at the time he made his decision, he didn't know he would effectively be purged in the 1940s. In terms of his artistic development, I don't think he could have written his great pieces if he had stayed in Paris. I think his natural voice would have been destroyed. He wouldn't have had the success that was due him. The Parisians were brutal in their judgments of his music while he was living there. No matter what he wrote, he couldn't please them and he would never be considered as avant-garde as Stravinsky. Unfortunately he had no way of knowing that even in the Soviet Union he would be considered an outsider as he had been in Paris. But look at all the masterpieces he was able to produce during that time period - the War Sonatas, Romeo and Juliet, Peter and the Wolf, the Seventh Symphony.

AIM: If people like the second Sonata, what should they explore next?

Nissman: They should definitely explore the Classical Symphony which is very accessible. Then they might listen to the First and Third Piano Concertos or the orchestral suite from Romeo and Juliet. And Lieutenant Kijé which followed on the heels of the second Sonata. You catch a glimpse of what he was going to do in Kijé already in the second movement of the second Sonata. In Lieutenant Kijé , the rhythms get under your skin and the melodies are incomparable.

Then if you're really adventurous, you could rent Alexander Nevsky or Ivan the Terrible where Prokofiev did the music. If you're into old movies, they're really interesting to see.

AIM: Thanks so much for talking with me, it's been a delight.

Visit Barbara Nissman's Website
Recordings, master class information, and more
http://www.barbaranissman.com/

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 © 2008 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved - This material may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten, redistributed, resold, or manipulated in any form.

Barbara Nissman's recordings of
Prokofiev's piano sonatas
 

Barbara's Recommendations -

Prokofiev Biography by Harlow Robinson
Nissman: "the best..., very readable..."
 

 Classical Symphony      Romeo and Juliet     Piano Concerto #3
      

Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible
   - movies on DVD (Amazon also has music CDs)
 

AIM's Picks -

 Piano Concerto #3   Lieutenant Kijé Suite
  

And don't miss Barbara's book on Bartok
 

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