I was introduced to Serge Prokofieff in 1931. It was in Paris one evening when he came to conduct at the Salle Pleyel a festival of some of his symphonic works. In the diffused grey-green light of the foyer a tall man was standing, his arms crossed on his chest in what I later came to know as a characteristic attitude, with fingers gripping the elbows firmly. His face was in shadow as he had his back to the light. The shape of his head was oblong, solid and regular. His chest looked strong. I approached him from the side and as he turned towards me with liveliness I was struck by the extraordinary blue luminous clarity of a look that I shall never forget—one of those looks that a child gives you, that is so unusual and so moving in a grown man. In the years that followed I was to see this freshness, this transparent naïveté sometimes shadowed over, the pupils troubled like those of a boy who begins to ask himself what is beauty, or what is beyond it. But on this particular evening it was sparkling, because the concert had been an unqualified success. At the same time, for a fleeting moment, I noted in his face the reflection of that seriousness which is habitual when one is alone. It lasted for a tenth of a second; then an irresistible charm was born. Serge Prokofieff had begun to smile—that delightful smile which spreads across his mobile lips, a shade sensual, but scarcely deeper in colour than his fresh complexioned face.

The proverbial stir which the first appearances of Prokofieff's works caused in the concert halls of Russia will never be quite forgotten. He was something like a square peg in a round hole, and as far as squareness goes, he was very square indeed—square rhythms, square forms and straightforward artistic aspirations—these at least were the features by which those few who understood him then, were most struck. The fact that there were still other aspects to his music was only realized later. At that time many æsthetic theories were being discussed and followed by the artistic and pseudo-artistic circles in which he moved. A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakoff, Liadov and Vitol and, although an admirer of their works, unconvinced by their theories, he was more open to influences not much appreciated by the academic set and was eager to embark on experiments in several directions. More clearly than in the orchestral works with which I am here concerned, this can be perceived in his early operas. Were it not for the strength of his personality—a personality as forceful then as it is today—much inconsequence of style might have been the result. It is his musicianship which has prevented him from following the same path as, for instance, Shostakovich, who, for as long as he was allowed to, remained an experimentalist and then went the well-trodden way of conventionalism. In Prokofieff's case, however, discrepancies which will come to light under close examination are smoothed over by a homogeneous style and by great technical skill.

For about half my professional life I have been interested in these works, securing one after another as many of them as came on the visible side of my horizon. This interest was first awakened by the study of the Ballad for Cello and Piano, Opus 13, which I was asked to play at a concert in Manchester somewhere round about 1920. The Ballad is a piece in which, for all its comparative immaturity, there are unmistakable traces of a new and highly original personality together with a good deal of fascinating intricacy. To bait the hook still more temptingly for me there was every need to practise a number of the passages both diligently and even ingeniously before it was possible to execute them with a modicum of respectability. Time has in no way staled for me the intriguing delights of this early work.

In the Soviet Union of today, as in the Imperial Russia of the past, ballet occupies the position of a major art and enjoys all the privileges of that station, not the least of which is having original music composed for each new work. Few of the distinguished names in Soviet music have not, at some time or other, appeared upon the score for a ballet, and as these are all three or four acts long, composing for the ballet can be compared to writing an opera—a major work requiring time and co-operation with the other arts involved.