The monument to S. Prokofiev was opened in front of the house-Museum of the composer in Kamergersky lane in Moscow on 11 December 2016. According to Deputy Minister of culture of the Russian Federation Alexander Zhuravsky, this event summed up the year of Prokofiev in Russia. Totally more than 1’200 events were held, and the topic sounded daily at Saint-Petersburg Cultural forum.
The author of the bronze monument with a height of 210 cm is academician of the Russian Academy of arts, people’s artist of Russia A. N. Kovalchuk. The intention of the sculptor was primarily “to make a monument organic in relation to the place,” and he found a solution after seeing the picture of running Sergei Prokofiev. Thus, a bronze composer is walking with our contemporaries.
The initiators of the construction are the Russian military-historical society and all-Russian Museum Association of musical culture named after M. I. Glinka (the Museum of Glinka), in whose jurisdiction applies House-Museum of composer. Mikhail A. Bryzgalov, Director of Glinka Museum, conducted the opening of the monument.
General Director of the Mariinsky theatre V. A. Gergiev, who attended the event, said that by the end of the year Prokofiev gained: “all young musicians, from the age of 12, today enter the wonderful world of his works”. According to the Maestrowho travelled through 19 countries with the concerts in memory of the composer, Sergei Prokofiev took its rightful place on the musical Olympus, and may be called Mozart of XX century.
Museum of Glinka opened a new exhibition in the House-Museum, the former home of the second wife of the composer M. Mendelson, where Prokofiev had lived during the last 6 years of his life. Items related to professional and personal life of this remarkable man came to the exhibition from different sources, such as personal Fund of Prokofiev’s grandson Gabriel, from the vaults of the Museum of musical, Mariinsky theatre and others.
Cultural-political magazine “E Vesti” asked V. Gergiev to share the experience from the exposure and to highlight the fact that seemed the most interesting for him:
«It’s great that the exhibition presents so much information, photos.
I’ll start with what I saw among the personal belongings of Sergey Prokofiev. We learn about the personality of the Creator, even when we see his coat. He was a slender, graceful artist. This coat is hard to imagine on anyone else who would produced the impression of more elegant, even refined artist. This immediately caught my eye.
But I think that together we can enrich the heritage of Prokofiev, to spice it up. I was not so long ago in Havana, by the way, before the American President, and learned that in the theatre Sergei Rachmaninov, Anna Pavlova, Fyodor Chaliapin, Heifetz and Horowitz, Caruso have also played and sang. And the same on stage of Carnegie Hall. For us, Russian artists, memory is an important and exciting meeting with the stage space, remembering the wizard.
I think Prokofiev’s world will be brighter presented here and in St. Petersburg and regions of Russia. We have something to do in order the regions of Russia looked richer, because they have to keep the memory of those great musicians. Prokofiev had traveled nearly 100 years ago to Vladivostok and ended up in Japan. We, the entire staff of the Mariinsky theatre a month ago visited Sakhalin, Khabarovsk, Ussuriysk and we’re making a totally different structural links between regions, and Prokofiev will take a huge place in it. We have already shown the importance of Prokofiev heritage, the Culture channel has shown our concert from Vladivostok to the whole country. I think we should encourage and fund the development of regions, but it must be associated with something essential in our history.
Today for the Philharmonics, where performed and passed Sergei Prokofiev, it is impossible not to know his life. This is carelessness and even contempt. I repeat – thanks to Olga Golodets, thanks to the Moscow authorities, activists and enthusiasts, but we still have a lot of work. When the theatre in Khabarovsk, Yakutsk, Krasnoyarsk, will make their own Prokofiev festival and there will feature 5-6 operas by Prokofiev, then we can say that we have tremendous changes in the country. I think that resources are inexhaustible, but we have to work better.”
Sources: Glinka Museum
