Eric’s Favorite Pieces: Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije Suite
If movies and literature are any indication, high school is one of the easiest times in a person’s life. Friends are made, everyone looks great all the time, parties involving making out occur with staggering regularity, and occasional vampire attacks keep everyone cheerfully on their toes. This was, it may surprise you to know, not the case at all for me. I was confused! I looked terrible all the time! Girls were far more frightening than vampires (the vampires at my high school were usually stoned, and didn’t pose much of a threat)! I had crippled myself socially by electing to play viola in the school orchestra (who would’ve thought membership in the high school orchestra didn’t come with a lifetime membership in the Playboy Mansion Free Handjob Club and the adoration of all who dared look upon me?)! Life was baffling and tumultuous!
Meanwhile, almost a century earlier, Sergei Prokofiev had written his first opera when he was frigging nine years old. Good thing one of us had things figured out, because as it turned out, Prokofiev helped me through all the tumultuity and bebafflement—possibly without even knowing he was doing it! In fact, I used to listen to the entirety of Abbey Road every morning (while eating crumpets, wondering what it was like to be all cultured and British) and fell asleep listening to Prokofiev’s suite from Lieutenant Kije. (more…)