Photo: Oleg and his brother Sviatislov
with Michael Jon Spencer

In 1985, on a visit to Paris, I met and befriended Prokofieff's first wife, Lina, then 88 years old. We "hit if off." Back in New York City I began to conceive of an event that would pull together many "threads"… a 50th Anniversary celebration of her husband's masterpiece "Peter and the Wolf." I took a deep breath, called her, and proposed that she come to New York City to narrate "Peter and the Wolf" at an all-Prokofieff concert to be produced by HAI as a fundraiser. After some deliberation she agreed only on two conditions: that her son Oleg, living in London, accompany her, and that they both be flown on "the fast plane" as she called it ...The (late) Concorde. When I called Oleg, introduced myself, and ran the idea by him his enthusiastic response was "are you crazy!" The next time we spoke was when he accompanied his mother off the plane in November of 1985.

Years later, in 1991, both Oleg and his brother Sviatislov stayed with me for a week after joining Mtislav Rostropovitch in Washington, DC for a performance celebrating the 100th anniversary of Prokofieff's birth. Over the years I have also come to know some of the composer's grandchildren who live in England and France.

These extended contacts with the Prokofieff families and the biography by Harlow Robinson have yielded many of the answers I have sought about the composer.

- Michael Jon Spencer

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