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sai-national.org • SUMMER 2016 • PAN PIPES 21 A B C D E G H I J K M N O P Q R S T U W X Y Z A WORLD OF MUSIC Before I le the United States to go on a Russian river cruise, I had arranged to visit the Sergei Prokofiev Museum in Moscow. Once onboard the ship, I invited Gera, a young woman at the front desk, to accompany me and translate. We took the metro and then walked to 8 Tokmakov Lane, a large building that houses both the museum and the Children's Musical School No. 1, named aer the composer. On the lawn by the entrance, a bronze statue sculpted by Vladimir Dumanyan to commemorate the centenary of Prokofiev's birth welcomes everyone. Seated, the composer appears thoughtful, perhaps listening to the students inside perform. By the entrance, we met our guide, Elizaveta. Upstairs in two rooms displaying books, musical scores, photographs, furniture, and his piano, she pointed out many interesting objects, including the manual typewriter on which Sergei wrote the libretto for War and Peace and Matisse's portrait of the composer with an elongated face. During the visit, I was surprised to discover that although this was the first, it is not the only Prokofiev Museum in the city. Located just off Red Square in the apartment at 6 Kamergersky Lane where he lived the last six years before his death, is a second museum, a reproduction of his studio that is filled with memorabilia. ere is also a third museum in his birthplace, Krasnoye village, in Ukraine. At the end of the tour, I was fascinated by another Prokofiev portrait. On a gigantic canvas, Lyudmila Ostrava had painted the composer sitting at his piano, the sun streaming in the large windows behind him; perched on a branch of one of the many trees was a little bird who the three of us agreed was probably the one in Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67. A recording of it enthralled me when I was a child. Mentally, I could hear that familiar flute melody. But that is not the only music of Sergei Prokofiev that I love. For more than a half century, I've been partial to his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 16. It was the signature concerto of my late brother, concert pianist Prokofiev in Moscow A World of Music A World of Music The bronze statue of Prokofiev outside the museum. PROKOFIEV continued on page 22

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