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On November 11, 1985, HAI
celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Prokofieff
composing Peter and the Wolf with an all-Prokofieff concert
at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The evening featured the
composer’s 88 year-old widow, Lina Prokofieff, in her narrating
debut and their son Oleg, a London-based sculptor, who provided commentary
about his father’s life. In addition to Peter and the Wolf,
The Brooklyn Philharmonic, with Lukas Foss conducting, performed The
Lt. Kizhe Suite, the NYC premiere of “American”
Overture and The Third Piano Concerto. Pianist Garrick
Ohlsson, with two day's notice, joined the program when the originally
scheduled pianist Byron Janis was forced to cancel due to illness.
HAI’s Founder and
Executive Director, Michael Jon Spencer, an ardent Prokofieff fan
since childhood, had the opportunity to meet the composer’s
widow while visiting Paris in the spring of 1985. A warm friendship
developed between the two over the next few months through phone
calls and correspondence. Realizing that 1985 marked the 50th Anniversary
of Peter and the Wolf, Mr. Spencer asked Mme. Prokofieff
to come to New York (where she was born) accompanied by her son
and to be featured at a special benefit performance of the work.
Although nervous and skeptical at first, she decided to do it. “After
all,” she reasoned, “I was an opera singer and still
have good diction. Besides, I think Serge would have wanted me to
do it.”
The concert, organized
in just three months, was a smashing success. The audience was overwhelmingly
responsive, as was the press. Mme. Prokofieff, read with “elan
and dry amusement,” said one critic, and “provided (the
audience) with an irreplaceable historical event,” commented
another. Messages of greetings and congratulations to the Prokofieffs
from President Ronald Reagan and NYC Mayor Edward I. Koch were read,
adding further luster to the evening.
The concert’s audience
was provided with a visual treat as well in a special exhibit in
the Tully Hall lobby. Oleg Prokofieff brought two wood sculptures
from London, including one created for the occasion depicting his
father and a wolf, as well as copies of drawings that he made of
his father. Keith Haring, world-renowned artist, initially known
for his graffiti work in the New York subways, donated a delightful
poster and logo design that was used to commerate the event. In
the lobby was a wall feauturing a selection of approximately 50
Peter and the Wolf record jackets depicting narrators as
diverse as David Bowie, Tom Seaver and Mia Farrow as well as illustrations
from book versions of the work.
Lina and Oleg Prokofieff
were ecstatic, delighted by the intimate quality of the event, and
impressed by the response of the invited disabled and elderly audience
at the afternoon dress rehearsal.
Madame Prokofieff was
pleased as well with her narrating debut. “It reminded me,”
she said afterwards, “of something that someone had told me
many years ago that I had long since, until now forgotten: that
just when you think that your life is over, suddenly, then, it will
begin again, anew.”
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