Prokofiev in Paris: Exploring early 20th Century Cultural Networks

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This event will be held in French and English.

Organized by the and the Serge Prokofiev Foundation. With support from the , and the .

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Advancing scholarship on Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), this symposium will draw on digital humanities methodologies and archival innovation to offer new perspectives on his professional activity in France. The symposium will foster dialogue between traditional musicological scholarship and emerging digital humanities methodologies. The period selected for examination – roughly dating from his first connection with France in 1914 until his return to the Soviet Union in 1936, is arguably one of the most experimental and least understood in Prokofiev’s artistic output. The symposium, therefore, will explore connections with both historical and theoretical topics related to this period.

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Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc (unless otherwise indicated)

9–11 a.m.

Panel 1 – Prokofiev’s Musical Networks (Chaired by Dr. Nelly Kravetz)

• Laetitia Le Guay-Brancovan “Prokofiev dans l’espace social parisien : entre cercles russes et salons”
• Alexandra Magazin “Prokofiev and Triton: Rewriting the Map of Parisian Modernism
• Harlow Robinson Serge Prokofiev And Serge Koussevitzky In Paris: Concerts Symphoniques Serge Koussevitzky (1921-28)”
• Kristin Van den Buys “Bridging Cultures: Prokofiev in Brussels (1923-1936). Russian-Belgian Musical Correspondence and Modernist Networks”

11–12 p.m.

Panel 2 – Performing Prokofiev (Chaired by Dr. Inessa Bazayev)

• Yihan Jin “Forging a Piano-Virtuoso: Prokofiev’s December 1924 Paris Recital”
• Viktoria Zora “The composition, publication and early performance history of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto”

1:30–3 p.m.

Keynote Dr. Nicolas Moron (Chaired by Dr. Christina Guillaumier)

« Toutes les lettres que je dois écrire m’étouffent »

Itinéraires méthodologiques et herméneutiques autour de l’édition numérique d’un déluge épistolaire.

3–5 p.m.

Digital Humanities Workshop – led by Dr. Natalia Ermolaev (Columbia University) and Dr. Antonina Puchkovskaia (King’s College London)

Salle de Conférences

Salle de Conférences

10–12 p.m.

Panel 3 – Prokofiev’s ballets (chaired by Dr. Inessa Bazayev)

• Philip Bullock “Where is le Borysthène? Rethinking the Ballets Russes”
• Vito Lentini “Le fils prodigue and the Aesthetic and Anthropological Line of a Beginning and an Ending in Dance”
• Nuno Lucas “Designing Chout: A Study of Compositional Progress and Architecture”
• Giuseppe Montemagno “« Entre le pathétique et la fantaisie burlesque » : Le Fils prodigue et la collaboration avec Boris Kochno”

1:30–2:30 p.m.

Panel 4 – Reinterpreting Prokofiev’s Early Works (Chaired by Dr. Nelly Kravetz)

• Kateryna Ielysieieva “Lina Codina and the Revival of Prokofiev’s Early Operas”
• Shiori Kikuma “Exploring ‘Oriental’ features in Prokofiev’s White Quartet via Stravinsky’s The Nightingale”

2:45–3:45 p.m.

Panel 5 – Prokofiev and the Rachmaninoff Conservatory (Chaired by Dr. Christina Guillaumier)

• Elena Rovenko “Les archives du Conservatoire Rachmaninoff comme reflet de la vie culturelle de la communauté émigrée dans les années 1920–1930”
• Arnaud Freilly “Prokofiev in his Parisian walls. The Rachmaninoff Conservatory”

4–5 p.m.

Plenary - Prokofiev studies in the 21st Century

• Nicolas Moron
• Christina Guillaumier (Chair)
• Natalia Ermolaev
• Inessa Bazayev
• Gabriel Prokofiev

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Ancienne élève de l’École Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm-Sèvres), Laetitia Le Guay Brancovan est maître de conférences à CY Cergy Paris Université et membre titulaire de l’unité mixte de recherche UMR-8224 EUR’ORBEM (Paris-Sorbonne Université – CNRS). Ses travaux portent sur les musiques russe et d’Europe centrale, plus particulièrement sous l’angle des relations entre musique et littérature (Prokofiev et le symbolisme russe, Bartók et Maeterlinck, Proust et Saint-Saëns), musique et politique (les compositeurs russes sous le stalinisme, la metteure en scène Natalia Sats et le théâtre pour enfants en Russie soviétique), musique et arts (Béla Bartók et la Sécession hongroise), transferts culturels en Europe (Prokofiev et Paris), ou encore, femmes artistes effacées (Sofia Tolstoï, Natalia Sats). Elle est l’auteur de deux biographies : Serge Prokofiev, Actes sud, 2012 et Béla Bartók, Actes sud, 2022, et de documentaires sur France Culture. Elle travaille actuellement sur les années parisiennes de Serge Prokofiev.

Philip Ross Bullock is Professor of Russian Literature and Music at the University of Oxford. His most recent books include Pyotr Tchaikovsky (2016) and – as editor – Rachmaninoff and His World (2022). He was recently Senior Fellow at the Maison de la Création et de l’innovation at the University of Grenoble Alpes, where he began a new project examining the history of the Ballet Russes from a postcolonial perspective.

Kateryna Ielysieieva was born in Kharkov (Ukraine). First studied piano and chamber

music in the Kharkov Special Music School and then in the Kharkov Institute of Arts. She studied the harpsichord and the organ also. Participated in the concerts with orchestra in Kharkov, in the festival «Kharkov assemblies», and in the Alessandro Casagrande International Piano Competition, Italy. Participates in the concerts as a harpsichordist, organist, pianist. She worked as Accompanist and Senior Lecturer at National Academy of Culture and Art Management in Kiev and took part in the national and international conferences as a musicologist. She has publications in musicological journals. Now she relocated to Athens (Greece). My work actively integrates digital humanities methodologies, particularly the use of digitized music archives and online catalogues to trace little-known music and composers. Digital access allows me to compare musical editions and archival documents from multiple international sources, making such research both productive and accessible despite geographical limitations.

Yihan Jin is a pianist and PhD candidate at the Royal College of Music, supervised by Christina Guillaumier and Kenneth Hamilton. Her research explores technique, expressivity, embodiment, and creativity in pianistic approaches to Prokofiev’s sonatas. She is an Associate Fellow (AFHEA) and a member of the Royal Musical Association Student Committee. She has performed across the UK, France, and China, and has supported international conservatoire collaborations, masterclasses, academic lectures, and music publications as a facilitator and translator.

Shiori Kikuma is currently a part-time lecturer at Shobi University. She studied musicology at Tokyo University of the Arts, and Russian at Moscow State University, receiving her Ph.D. in 2008 with a dissertation on two versions of the opera The Gambler. She is the author of two Japanese books, Dots and Lines of Peter and the Wolf (2021) and Prokofiev (2024).

Vito Lentini is Professor of Philosophy and Human Sciences, specialising in Pedagogy and the History of Dance, which he teaches at the Accademia Teatro alla Scala. He was a Research Fellow at the University of Turin and now he collaborates on a research project within the Department of Cultural and Environmental Heritage at the University of Milan. Here he studies the archive of Luciana Novaro and his digitization. His research focuses on the evolution of ballet as an art form during the 18th and 19th centuries, with particular attention to Nureyev’s repertoire and British ballet. He is an essayist, gives lectures, and contributes writings on dance and ballet to the program notes of various Italian and international theaters. Additionally, he is a journalist, a dance and ballet critic, and the editor-in-chief of the magazine Sipario, and writes about dance for the magazine La Scala and for the culture section of the online editorial of Il Sole 24 Ore.

Dr. Nuno Lucas is a London-based pianist and musicologist. He studied piano performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and later completed his Master’s and PhD degrees at the Royal College of Music, under the supervision of Dr Christina Guillaumier. Fully supported by FCT I.P, his doctoral research examined the textural correlations between piano and orchestral writing in Prokofiev’s music, with a focus on timbre and orchestration, contributing to practice-led approaches in performance and musicology.

Alexandra Magazin is a musicologist, PhD in Music, Assistant Lecturer at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Academy of Music, and postdoctoral researcher since 2025. Her work focuses on contemporary music and 20th-century French cultural contexts, with special expertise in Marcel Mihalovici’s oeuvre. She received three Paul Sacher Foundation fellowships and conducted archival research in Basel, Paris, and Reading. She published two Mihalovici volumes and serves as Artistic Director of the Ligeti Transilvania Festival.

Giuseppe Montemagno est professeur d’Histoire de la musique au Conservatoire « V. Bellini » de Catane (Italie). Ses intérêts de recherche portent sur la dramaturgie musicale, les migrations culturelles et les échanges artistiques entre la France et l’Italie aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Dans ce cadre, il a participé à de nombreux colloques en Europe, Asie et Amérique du Nord. Auteur d’articles sur Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Massenet, Bruneau, Charpentier et Debussy, il a été coéditeur des volumes Vincenzo Bellini et la France (2008) et Beyond the stage. Musical theatre and performing arts between fin de siècle and the années folles (2017). Il a consacré des études à la mise en scène d’opéra, notamment de Patrice Chéreau, Emma Dante, Claus Guth, Lamberto Puggelli. Journaliste et critique musical depuis trente ans, il a à son actif des collaborations avec des périodiques spécialisés (L’Avant-Scène Opéra, dont il est conseiller de rédaction, Hystrio, Connessi all’opera, L’opera).

Harlow Robinson is Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, at Northeastern University (Boston, MA, USA). He is the author of Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography (Viking, 1987, and five other editions); Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev (Northeastern U Press, 1998); and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians (U Press of New England, 2007). His writing has appeared in Musical Quarterly, Russian Review, Slavic Review, Opera, Opera News, Musical America, New York Times, Muzykal'naya zhizn' and Za rubezhom. He has written program essays for The Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Salzburg Festival, Metropolitan Opera, and Rotterdam Philharmonic. He has lectured at Moscow University, Leningrad Conservatory, Carnegie Hall, Guggenheim Museum, Boston Symphony, Lincoln Center, New York Philharmonic, and Aspen Music Festival. He received three fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and IREX for research on Sergei Prokofiev in archives in Paris, London, the USSR and Russian Federation.

Elena Rovenko, docteure en histoire de l’art (Saint-Pétersbourg, 2013), est archiviste-chercheuse au Conservatoire Rachmaninoff de Paris et chargée de cours à l’Université de Strasbourg. Auteure de l’ouvrage Le Temps dans la pensée philosophique et artistique : Henri Bergson, Claude Debussy, Odilon Redon, Moscou, 2016, et de 57 articles sur la musique française et russe, la peinture, le cinéma et la philosophie. Membre d’associations de recherche, dont SFAM, GATM, SATMUS et RNPaM.

Kristin Van den Buys (b. 1962) is a senior researcher in musicology. She studied musicology at Ghent University (1984) and earned degrees in Early Music and Music Theory from the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and LUCA School of Arts in Leuven (1989–1991). Between 1990 and 2000, she produced cultural programs for Radio 3, the classical music channel of the Flemish public broadcasting at the time. She obtained her PhD from the University of Leuven in 2004 with a dissertation on musical modernism in Belgium during the interwar period.

Van den Buys has published extensively on musical practices in Belgium and Flanders, as well as on the history of broadcasting. She is currently Professor of Music History and Head of Research at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, part of Erasmus University College Brussels. Since 2014, she has also held a professorship at the Free University of Brussels.

Dr Viktoria Zora is a violinist and musicologist. Her research interests include Russian music of the 20th century, cultural diplomacy, music publishing, and performance practice. She has presented academic papers at national and international conferences in the UK, the USA, Russia, Finland, Norway, France and Greece. Viktoria has published articles and book chapters (2015-2024) on the violin music of Sergei Prokofiev, and on Anglo-American and Anglo-Soviet music exchanges in the 1940s. She is the editor of Henle’s Urtext edition of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Sonata Opus 94bis (2025). Viktoria holds BMus (University of Athens, Greece), MA (Royal Academy of Music, University of London), PhD (Goldsmiths College, University of London), and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

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Philip Ross Bullock, “Where is le Borysthène? Rethinking the Ballets Russes”

Falling between the three scores that Prokofiev wrote for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and the three full-length ballets he wrote in the Soviet Union, Sur le Borysthène is surely the composer’s least studied ballet score. Opening at the Opéra de Paris in December 1932, it ran for only a handful of performances and if it is known at all, it is in the form of the orchestral suite that Prokofiev derived from it. In this paper, I consider the ballet from a rather new perspective: that of its relationship to Ukrainian culture. Its libretto deals with the story of a soldier returning to his Ukrainian homeland after the First World War and three of its creators – the choreography Serge Lifar, the artist Mikhail Larionov, and, of course, Prokofiev himself – had links to Ukraine. Whilst contemporary reviews of the ballet’s short run evinced a predominantly Russo-centric narrative, a small number of instances reveal that the ballet’s Ukrainian was visible to some critics. Situating the work’s reception in the broader context of interwar French politics and diplomacy, I will will argue that our histories of the so-called “Russian” emigration need to be urgently rewritten to reflect a greater diversity of identities and origins.

Kateryna Ielysieieva, “Lina Codina and the Revival of Prokofiev’s Early Operas”

This paper reconsiders Lina Codina (later Lina Prokofieva) as a central yet overlooked

figure in shaping the operatic trajectory of Sergei Prokofiev during his émigré years in Europe. Moving beyond her traditional image as muse or spouse, Codina emerges here as an active collaborator, performer, and archivist who mediated between the composer, his publishers, and international performance institutions, playing a decisive role in preserving and promoting his operatic works across borders and generations.

Focusing on two works, Maddalena (1911–1913) and The Fiery Angel (1919–1927), the paper traces how Codina’s practical and emotional engagement influenced both the creative process and the preservation of these operas. Her archival work with the Russian Musical Publishing House was crucial in securing Maddalena’s rediscovery in the 1970s and facilitating its dissemination to international publishers and performance venues. Archival evidence also highlights her behind-the-scenes involvement during The Fiery Angel’s protracted gestation — from Prokofiev’s early drafts to her advocacy for performances that never materialized during his lifetime.

By connecting these histories, the study reveals a gendered dynamic of authorship, collaboration, and preservation. Codina’s contribution exemplifies how women’s emotional and curatorial work shaped the survival and later recognition of early twentieth-century Prokofiev’s repertoire. Her work anticipates today’s archival and performance revival practices, bridging personal devotion and memory, and illuminating previously neglected pathways through which Prokofiev’s operatic legacy entered the public sphere.

Yihan Jin, “Forging a Piano-Virtuoso: Prokofiev’s December 1924 Paris Recital”

In 1924, a series of recitals given by Prokofiev in France signified his emerging identity as a pianist on the Parisian music circuit. This began with the premiere of his Fifth Sonata at the Opéra-Comique (9 March), was followed by a performance of his Second Sonata in Marseille (20 March), and culminated in a recital on 5 December at the Champs-Élysées Theatre—where he boldly showcased his compositions in a four-sonata “marathon,” presenting the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sonatas in a single evening. This challenging programme was clearly a striking declaration of the young Russian’s artistic ambition.

These concerts have been little studied, and the relative scarcity of documentation relevant to them suggests that Prokofiev’s position as a pianist was still marginal, in contrast to his bourgeoning reputation as a composer. Drawing on concert programmes, press reviews, archival correspondence, and other evidence of critical reception, this paper seeks to examine the professional significance of the concerts, especially the December recital. It considers how these events consolidated Prokofiev’s public identity as both performer and composer.

Performance-practice issues are also addressed, through an examination of Prokofiev’s technical approach (Leikin, 2011) and interpretative strategies in relation to (Juslin, 2003) the pianistic norms (Roy Howat, 2009) of interwar Paris. Did he adapt his style to appeal to an established Parisian aesthetic? In re-evaluating this somewhat overlooked but pivotal moment in Prokofiev’s career as a pianist, the paper offers insights into how Prokofiev placed himself within French modernists and Russian émigrés.

Shiori Kikuma, “Exploring ‘Oriental’ features in Prokofiev’s White Quartet via Stravinsky’s The Nightingale”

This presentation examines the possible connection between Prokofiev’s abandoned work the White Quartet and Stravinsky’s opera The Nightingale. Through this connection, I attempt to shed light on the emergence of an East Asian influence in the White Quartet.

Prokofiev’s autobiography and diary reveal the time and place of the composition of the quartet. The idea of writing a quartet using only white keys occurred in October 1914. In June of that year, Prokofiev traveled to London and heard The Nightingale. He began working on the White Quartet again in 1918 in Japan and continued in America. Themes for the first movements were reused in The Fiery Angel, while themes for the second movements were reused in the Third Piano Concerto.

In June of 1918, the season and the religious atmosphere of Nara Park may have reminded Prokofiev of the white-key melody for the quartet, which can be compared with the fisherman’s spiritual song in The Nightingale. Around the same time, he sent a postcard to Stravinsky. A waterside view in Nara may have evoked the “chinoiserie” stage design for The Nightingale by Alexandre Benois, then described by Prokofiev as “a best friend.” Through such memories, the quartet might have begun to acquire an East Asian influence. The newly composed theme includes a pentatonic element later used in the third movement of the Third Piano Concerto.

Vito Lentini, Le fils prodigue and the Aesthetic and Anthropological Line of a Beginning and an Ending in Dance

Le fils prodigue represents one of the final chapters created by composer Sergei Prokofiev before his return to the Soviet Union, marking one of the most intriguing musical experiments of his output conceived for dance, and preceding the more well-known and structured outcomes of his musical contribution to the art of Terpsichore. A work that deserves in-depth study for multiple reasons: it represents one of the final chapters in the history of the Ballets Russes in France; it incorporates elements of the French choreographic tradition, notably through Serge Lifar’s historic interpretation - as well as the sets and costumes designed specifically for the occasion by Georges Rouault -; it outlines key features of George Balanchine’s choreographic flair at a time when his artistic identity was still in the making; and it captures the first tentative steps of British ballet toward dramaturgical intensity through Anton Dolin. A performance that thus lends itself to multiple interpretations and aesthetic readings, foreshadowing - under certain aspects - the great revolution in male dance that would unfold in the second half of the twentieth century.

An example of anthropological fusion and artistic cross-contamination, which this study

aims to explore by drawing in particular on the available cultural heritage through the use of digital technologies and the integration of tangible and intangible heritage. Through the combined approaches of close reading and distant reading (Franco Moretti), a focused analysis of the ballet will be undertaken - especially in relation to its biblical source and the choreographic developments it presents - while also taking into account the cultural, theoretical, and geographical contexts evoked by the performance, which premiered on May 17, 1921, at the Théâtre de la Gaîté Lyrique in Paris.

Nuno Lucas, “Designing Chout: A Study of Compositional Progress and Architecture”

As Prokofiev’s first successful ballet, Chout (Op. 21) paved the way for his future collaborations with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Encapsulating a crucial stage in the composer’s search for individuality in his orchestration, Chout’s compositional process provided a valuable learning curve for Prokofiev in writing for the stage, shaped by his engagement with the practical demands of the genre and Diaghilev’s recommendations for revision.

This paper offers a critical examination of Chout’s compositional process through the analytical comparison of its resultant scores: the initial short score (1915), the revised full score (1920), and its subsequent piano transcription (pub. 1922). Methodologically, this study combines music analysis and archival research to interpret the composer’s revisions in light of both contemporary and modern approaches to orchestration, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s Principles of Orchestration and more recent perspectives on perceptual and auditory principles.

The analysis of Chout’s process proved indispensable to understanding its architectural frames and the gradual emancipation of the composer’s approach to texture and orchestration. The findings reveal a close interrelation between the orchestral writing and the piano reduction, whose changes in layout showcase Prokofiev’s prioritisation of textural layering, often embodying a return to the textures of the initial short score.

Alexandra Magazin, “Prokofiev and Triton: Rewriting the Map of Parisian Modernism”

In 1932 Paris, the Société Triton emerged from a daring idea: modern music could become a space where national borders lost their authority. Founded by Marcel Mihalovici together with Pierre-Octave Ferroud and Henry Barraud, Triton gathered a remarkable network of composers and placed Sergei Prokofiev not among distant honorary figures, but at the center of its active committee, alongside Honegger, Milhaud, Ibert, Harsányi, Rivier, and Tomasi.

Prokofiev’s position within Triton reveals more than participation in a concert society. It shows a composer fully embedded in Paris’s cosmopolitan modernist life, beyond the clichés of Russian exile, French influence, or émigré nostalgia. Triton offered him a rare platform where chamber music became a laboratory for stylistic confrontation, collaboration, and aesthetic risk.

Drawing on concert programs, press reception, and archival correspondence, this paper reconstructs Prokofiev’s presence within Triton: the works performed, the critical narratives surrounding him, and the debates generated by his music. Through Triton, Prokofiev appears not as a peripheral outsider, but as an active participant in a borderless modernism that anticipated postwar cosmopolitan ideals.

Giuseppe Montemagno « Entre le pathétique et la fantaisie burlesque » : Le Fils prodigue et la collaboration avec Boris Kochno

Créé le 21 mai 1929 au Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt de Paris par les Ballets Russes, au cours d’une soirée qui comprenait aussi Les Fâcheux – d’après Molière – d’Auric, Renard de Stravinsky et les Danses Polovtsiennes du Prince Igor de Borodine, Le Fils prodigue représente l’apogée de la collaboration entre Prokofiev, le chorégraphe Georges Balanchine et le librettiste Boris Kochno. Personnalité parmi les plus fulgurantes et discutée du milieu artistique parisien dans les années 1920, ce dernier fut secrétaire de Diaghilev (dont il héritera les archives et collections, plus tard acquises par la BnF), auteur des livrets de ballets (Mavra de Stravinsky) et, surtout, rival de Serge Lifar. Les collections documentaires de la Bibliothèque nationale de France permettent de retracer l’histoire d’un ballet qui frappe la critique par les contrastes qui animent les décors de Georges Rouault tout comme la chorégraphie de Georges Balanchine : dans les colonnes de « Comœdia » on analyse son « caractère ambigu qui oscille entre le pathétique et la caricature, l’apologue édifiant et la fantaisie burlesque ». Le « style composite de la mise en scène » qui en découle est le résultat d’une pluralité de visions souvent opposées, comme celles de Prokofiev et Balanchine, auquel le musicien se refusera de payer les droits d’auteur. La dernière création des Ballets Russes se pose sous le signe du péché, du repentir et du pardon, selon un livret qui considère le fils prodigue comme une métaphore de l’art et une image du Christ, bafoué dans ce monde, accueilli par le père lors de son retour à la maison céleste.

Harlow Robinson, Serge Prokofiev and Serge Koussevitzky in Paris: Concerts Symphoniques Serge Koussevitzky (1921-28)

From 1921 to 1928, after he left Russia and settled in Paris, conductor Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) led a semi-annual series of symphonic concerts that became major cultural events in the city's avant-garde artistic and musical life. The programs featured new works by leading French and Russian composers, including Prokofiev. Since their meeting in Russia in 1913, Koussevitzky had become in emigration one of Prokofiev's most important international promoters as publisher and conductor.

Prokofiev wrote to Nikolai Miaskovsky on 1/4/23: "It's no secret that it's impossible to rely on Koussevitzky's taste, but neither can one deny that he knows which way the wind is blowing. He demonstrated that ability in Russia, and now, in Paris, he is excellently informed about what is going on in music."

In Paris, Koussevitzky conducted world premieres of numerous Prokofiev works: the Violin Concerto No.1 (1923); the revised version of Piano Concerto No.2 (1924); Seven, They are Seven (1924); the Second Symphony (1925); and excerpts from Act II of The Fiery Angel (1928). He also programmed Scythian Suite; Piano Concerto No.3; selections from Love for Three Oranges; Symphony No.1; and selections from the ballet Chout.

Along with Serge Diaghilev, Koussevitzky played a seminal role in introducing Prokofiev to the influential musical networks of Paris and Europe. Prokofiev's extensive correspondence with Koussevitzky and with Miaskovsky provides an invaluable chronicle of this crucial collaboration with another member of the Russian artistic emigre community, which is the subject of my proposed presentation.

Elena Rovenko, “Les archives du Conservatoire Rachmaninoff comme reflet de la vie culturelle de la communauté émigrée dans les années 1920–1930”

Au centre de cette analyse se trouve la manière dont les archives du Conservatoire Rachmaninoff reflètent le fonctionnement de cette institution et de la Société musicale russe à l’étranger, devenue Société musicale russe en France, à laquelle le Conservatoire est lié depuis 1931. Découvertes en 2020 grâce à Arnaud Frilley, directeur actuel du Conservatoire, ces archives en sont encore aux premières étapes de leur étude, tout en ayant déjà fait l’objet d’une mise en valeur dans l’ouvrage Destins russes à Paris (2024), publié par Arnaud Frilley en collaboration avec Erwan Barillot. Les premiers documents relatifs à la fondation de ces institutions et à la constitution de leurs archives révèlent l’ambivalence de leur fonctionnement : il s’agissait de préserver l’héritage musical et pédagogique des institutions russes d’avant 1917 – notamment la Société musicale russe, fondée par Anton Rubinstein en 1859, et les conservatoires de Saint-Pétersbourg et de Moscou – tout en l’adaptant au contexte culturel parisien. Cette double orientation s’accompagna de contraintes juridiques, organisationnelles et financières, renforcées par les tensions propres aux milieux de l’émigration russe, dont témoigne la fragmentation du paysage institutionnel en plusieurs établissements musicaux concurrents.

Kristin Van den Buys, Bridging Cultures: Prokofiev in Brussels (1923-1936). Russian-Belgian Musical Correspondence and Modernist Networks

On April 29, 1929, Sergei Prokofiev’s opera The Gambler (Le joueur) premiered in French at the Belgian National Opera Theatre, La Monnaie, in Brussels. This performance was the result of a strategic cultural initiative led by its director Corneil de Thoran, reflecting a broader ambition of the Brussels cultural elite to position the city as a hub for French, Germanic, and Russian musical modernism. Alongside the premiere of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms in 1930, Le joueur affirmed Brussels’ status as a major European center for contemporary music.

Although originally commissioned by Albert Coates and intended for staging by Vsevolod Meyerhold in Russia, The Gambler was never performed in Saint Petersburg or Moscow. As a result, the Brussels premiere gained unique significance in Prokofiev’s biography, remaining the only staged performance of the opera during his lifetime. Prokofiev viewed this event as a potential gateway to further European productions.

This study is part of a broader research project on musical modernism in Brussels between 1919 and 1940. It draws on a relational database of over 1,000 records—including concerts, correspondence, articles, and policy documents—to explore the city’s role in shaping modernist music. The paper focuses on the 1929 and 1930 performances of Le joueur, analyzing unpublished correspondence between Prokofiev and La Monnaie’s directors, Paul Spaak and Corneil de Thoran, as well as insights from designers, directors, and critics. It also examines Prokofiev’s concert activity in Belgium (1923-1936) and his intellectual exchanges with Belgian intellectual and cultural networks and the Belgian Russian émigré circles through unpublished archival letters (archives of Serge Prokofiev Foundation Archive – Columbia Libraries and archives in Brussels and Antwerp).

Viktoria Zora, The composition, publication and early performance history of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto

In the early 1920s during an after-concert gathering in Warsaw, the Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti glimpsed at the Manuscript of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto Op. 19 (1915-1917) which fascinated him “by its mixture of fairy-tale naivety and daring savagery in layout and texture.” The encounter prompted Szigeti to send a postcard to Prokofiev, who in his reply of 13 August 1923 confirmed that the Manuscript still remained unpublished and that he would propose Szigeti as its future soloist. By 1923, Prokofiev’s wish for Paweł Kohánski to premiere the Concerto had not materialised, despite the fact that Kohánski helped Prokofiev to create “the superb violin solo part”. On 18 October 1923 Szigeti attended the long-awaited premiere of the Concerto with the violinist Marcel Darrieux under Serge Koussevitzky at the Paris Opera, which however, received a moderate success. It was only after Szigeti’s successful interpretation on 1 June 1924 at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Prague under Fritz Reiner that Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto became a resounding success.

The paper will discuss the shaping of composition, publication and early performance history of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto as it emerges from the amalgamation of diary entries, published and unpublished archival correspondence between Prokofiev, Koussevitzky, Kohánski and Szigeti (held at the Serge Prokofiev Archive, Columbia University), and surviving newspaper clippings.

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This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.

Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.

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