The Stone Flower
was Prokofiev’s absolute last composed
work. Indeed, on that fatal evening
in 1953 he had pen in hand setting notes
to paper* even as the fatal seizure
struck him to the floor. Of all Prokofiev’s
lengthy works it has endured the most
neglect, to my knowledge having never
been recorded complete before this.
Compared unfavourably to Romeo and
Juliet, it’s been condemned as an
interminable crashing bore and swept
firmly aside. In a manner similar to
Vaughan Williams’ Ninth Symphony
it has been presented as evidence that
the composer was utterly past it and
should have quit composing some time
previously. Vaughan Williams has since
had the last word, and I think now it’s
Prokofiev’s turn.
The plot of the ballet
is absurd, and totally unrelated to
the music, so we need not trouble with
it. At about my third complete listening
through, the idea struck me that this
work is Prokofiev’s "Symphony #8"
in a startling new form, never used
by the composer before — that of Mahler!
Like Mahler symphonies, the work is
long, in this case, at over two and
a half hours, exceeding Mahler’s longest.
Like all Mahler Symphonies, quotations
abound from earlier works. Dance movements
move deliriously across the stage to
be followed by long largos of slowly
shifting harmonies and static wails
of anguish and despair, then echoes
of the dance episodes waft eerily by.
In the end, as in Mahler symphonies,
the anguish builds to a huge climax
and dies away unrelieved. Previous recordings
of excerpts have made it impossible
to perceive the overall plan of the
music.
The annotator betrays
a curious prejudice against the efficacy
of Soviet divorces and civil marriages
by referring to Mira Mendelson as Prokofiev’s
"companion" when in fact and
in law Mira Mendelson Prokofieva was
his second wife and lies buried by his
side in Moscow. But is it possible that
Miss Mendelson in coming to be Mrs.
Prokofieva did more than advise her
husband on etiquette and protocol? Is
it possible she made him more aware
of a world of culture he had previously
only dabbled with (i.e. the Overture
on Hebrew Themes, Op 34 from 1919),
one he eventually came to identify with
very personally? No one doubts the influence
of Mahler on Shostakovich? Why not on
Prokofiev? Here is the proof.
*Lest I mislead, it
should be said that the score was complete,
but the Bolshoi had requested revisions
to facilitate the staging and it was
these he was writing.
Paul Shoemaker
See also
review by Rob Barnett
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda 
