Tuesday Tones (autumn music)

Here we have a student piece written by a young composer, when he was only 19 years of age. But not just any composer: it’s 20th century Russian great Sergei Prokofiev.

Prokofiev is, I admit, something of a tough nut for me. I don’t always respond readily to his music, for one reason or another. But this piece grabbed me immediately, perhaps because it is to my ears a fascinating blend of lyric Romanticism and of atmospheric Impressionism. I hear a wild melding of Tchaikovsky and Ravel here, and that is absolutely amazing to me. This work is called a “sketch”, and it is just that: a piece written by a student composer to explore some aspect of composition. In this case, I imagine it was to explore orchestral color and mood, and the mood is definitely dark and autumnal, in my ears.

Here is “Autumnal Sketch” by Sergei Prokofiev.

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