In late July 1926, Gavriil Grigoryevich Paichadze, the authorized representative of Kusevitsky’s music publishing house, joyfully informed Sergei Prokofiev that his opera *The Love for Three Oranges* had been requested in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odessa, and Zagreb. In response to this pleasant news, Sergei Sergeyevich exclaimed, “Great! *The Oranges* are heading out to the provinces.”
Negotiations began regarding the concert. When Prokofiev walked into Persimfans (short for “First Symphony Ensemble,” also known as the “First Symphony Ensemble of the Mossovet”) on February 3, 1927, a menacing telegram from Ukrainian official Vorobyov in Kharkiv was waiting for him. An official from the Ukrainian Ministry of Public Education warned that if Prokofiev were to give concerts in Ukraine not on behalf of the Ukrainian State Theaters, his concerts would be banned.
Outraged by such threats, Prokofiev planned to respond by performing in Kharkiv and Kyiv—not through the State Theaters, but with a private impresario—and to announce that the proceeds from the concert would go to help street children. Lev Moiseevich Zeitlin, the organizer of Persimfans, simply laughed off these threats, telling Prokofiev that “the threats from Kharkiv are in vain, for they have no right to make them.”
On February 18, the composer wrote in his diary:
Concerts with Lengosfil aren’t profitable for me. I’d rather go south, to Kharkiv or the Caucasus, where they pay me twice as much.
And on March 6, Sergei Sergeyevich boarded a train and set off for Ukraine to give a series of concerts there: two in Kharkiv, two in Kyiv, and two in Odesa.
He stayed in our beloved city from March 7 to 10, 1927. We can read in considerable detail in his diaries about how the composer saw Kharkiv.
On his first day in our city, Sergei Prokofiev was struck by the officials, the architecture, and the bathroom at his hotel.
March 7
We’ve been traveling to Kharkiv all day. I’ve known this route since childhood—and so many memories are tied to all the stations we’re passing… We arrive in Kharkiv at half past five in the evening. Tutelman, Vorobyov, and Dzbanovsky are on the platform. Vorobyev is the very same member of the Ukrainian government who sent telegrams to Persimfans, threatening that if I performed in Kharkiv on behalf of any organization other than the Ukrainian State Theaters, my concerts would not be permitted. At the time, both Zeitlin and I were very indignant and were quite ready to take up the gauntlet and perform just to spite him. But now that I had finally traveled to Ukraine under a contract with the Ukrainian State Theaters, Vorobyov met me at the train station as a very pleasant and modest man. We were seated in a rather nice open-top car and driven across the entire city to the “Krasnaya” Hotel—or “Chervonnaya,” as it’s called in Ukrainian. Kharkov (Kharkiv in Ukrainian) is large, dirty, and unattractive. Closer to the center, there are some decent German-style buildings. In fact, it turns out that the Germans played a significant role in Kharkiv’s architecture. Under the contract, the hotel expenses were covered by the State Theaters. We were assigned a huge two-room suite with a bathroom—which was quite absurd. In the bathtub, for example, only hot water runs, and to take a bath, you have to let it run and wait half an hour for it to cool down. There was a direct line to the city from the room, but no bell to summon the waiter, so I looked up our hotel’s number in the phone book to call it from the landline. They didn’t send a grand piano to my room, but they took me to the hotel manager’s room next door, where I practiced for a while. The concert is coming up soon. The theater is full. The grand piano is quite good. My program includes the Third and Second Sonatas, “Fugues,” some short pieces, and the “Toccata.” A great success, cheers, and encores… At the end of the concert, Vera Reberg appeared; I had already received a letter from her. Despite her difficult childhood, she looked quite well. After promising to visit her tomorrow, we hurried home, for I was exhausted after a day on the train, with the concert on top of that. Actually, I’ve been tired the whole time since arriving in the USSR. When I got home, I wanted to take a bath, but the enamel had chipped off in places, and it looked kind of leprous. We tried for a long time to get hold of one of the hotel staff, but it wasn’t that easy, since there were some elections today and the staff were out voting. In the end, they explained to us that the bathtub wasn’t mottled from dirt, but from cleanliness—because after every guest, they clean it with acid, which eats away at the enamel. Still, we decided to put off the pleasure of taking a bath until we got to Kyiv.
On the second day, having decided to take a break, Sergei Sergeyevich went for a walk around our city and was unpleasantly surprised to find that his copyright had been infringed.
March 8
It would seem like a day off, a chance to relax. But all the time, different people kept showing up… In the afternoon, I went out for a walk and saw my writings on display at a store called “Proletariy”—not in the original edition, but as counterfeit reprints by a Ukrainian publishing house. I couldn’t help myself and went into the store to confront them. After explaining who I was and what kind of edition they had on display in the windows, I asked on what grounds they were selling them.
“We get them from the Kyiv Music Enterprise,” the store manager replied.
“But that enterprise printed my compositions illegally, and you’re in the same position as a shop selling stolen goods.” The manager glanced around and, lowering his voice, said,
“Please don’t speak so loudly. Such language might make a bad impression on customers.”
“It’s a shame that your business is such that it can only be discussed in whispers.”
All in all, the conversation led nowhere, since, apparently, the criticism should have been directed not at the store but at the publishing house itself. The store manager, however, promised to order the original edition from Moscow in the future, though not particularly willingly, since, as he put it, orders from Moscow aren’t fulfilled as carefully as those from Kyiv. In the evening, Ptashka and I went to the Rebergs’. We walked through fairly deserted side streets, where there was a lot of snow. On the way, we recalled that in the south there are quite a few street urchins who run around in whole gangs, with one of them throwing himself at the feet of passersby, knocking them down, while the others pickpocket handbags and wallets, brandishing knives and biting with a syphilitic bite. However, the streets along our route were quiet and sleepy…
Sergei Prokofiev’s third day in Kharkiv was marked by a performance at the conservatory, encounters with fans, and a review of costume sketches for the Kharkiv production of *The Oranges*.
March 9
Rosenshtein stopped by to take us to the Conservatory. I’ve known Rosenshtein for a long time: he’s a cellist and a former student of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He was one of the first performers of my “Ballad,” which we played together at some concert back when we were still at the conservatory. Now he’s the director of the Kharkiv Conservatory, and yesterday he barged in on me, begging—in the name of our long-standing friendship (though there was no friendship to speak of)—to play for the students at his Conservatory. I never refuse to play for conservatory students—in fact, I actually enjoy doing it. As a result, today I performed for a cheerful and pleasant group of young people, playing gavottes, fairy-tale pieces, marches—in short, all sorts of little pieces. After the performance, there was a deafening roar in the hall. A student gave a speech to me in Ukrainian. The word “first” kept coming up—that is, first (first composer, first prize, first meeting, and so on). After leaving the Conservatory, we walked to the “Chervonaya” Hotel with Rosenshtein and a few other professors, taking advantage of the nice weather. Some female conservatory students kept following us, sometimes behind us, sometimes in front. At first I didn’t pay any attention to it; then it became funny; then it became intrusive—but right in front of the hotel, they suddenly gathered in a group and started nudging each other: “Come on, go ahead,” and finally they approached me, each handing me a small bouquet of white flowers that were being sold at street corners to celebrate the arrival of spring. It turned out to be quite sweet. The second concert was in the evening. The Fifth and Fourth Sonatas—which is very silly, since no one understands the Fifth, and the Fourth is too slow to generate any enthusiasm—but I haven’t prepared anything to replace these sonatas and fill the gap. When I mentioned this to Tutelman in Moscow, he replied:
“It’s fine, that’ll work. Just play the Fourth and Fifth Sonatas in the second concert—that way it won’t affect ticket sales, and you’re leaving town afterward anyway.”
However, the gavottes, excerpts from *The Oranges*, and *The Obsession*, with which I concluded the concert, got the audience moving and, as usual, were a great success. After the concert, the organizers wanted to host a dinner for me, but I begged them to spare me the trouble. The artist Khvostov showed me sketches of the costumes for the Kharkiv production of *The Oranges*—a blend of modern and fantastical styles. It’s hard to say, but so far I don’t particularly like these costumes.
The fourth day—time to leave. The sweet and affectionate “Utodik,” the negotiations with our State Opera, the great and merciless Kharkiv mud, and… a Black man. That’s what Sergei Prokofiev remembered from that time.
March 10
This morning, the Leontovych Quartet came to my place to play works by contemporary Ukrainian composers. When I asked who Leontovych was, it turned out he was a source of national pride in Ukraine—a composer who died during the revolution. It seems the Bolsheviks executed him back then, and now they’ve named a quartet after him. Today the quartet members played works by Lyatoshynsky, Lisovsky, Novosatsky, and Kozitsky for me. All of this could have been written fifty years ago, and back then it would have been quite pleasant music; now, however, it’s just provincial efforts that few people care about. In the afternoon, I stopped by to see Turkeltuba, a representative of the Ukrainian Society of Authors, affectionately known as “Utodik,” which stands for the Ukrainian Society of Playwrights and Composers. Since this society works in conjunction with its Moscow counterpart, I interviewed Turkeltayub about the Kyiv reprints and also inquired what fee the Kharkiv State Opera would be able to pay me if they staged *The Oranges*. It turned out that the State Opera, in negotiations with Weber, had offered so little that even after we raised our asking price, we were still asking for half of what they could afford to pay. True, the negotiations haven’t led to anything yet, but it’s important to know this for the future. In the evening, we left for Kyiv; Tutelman was traveling with us, and Vorobyov—that very important Communist—saw us off at the train station. Even though we were ready on time with our luggage, Tutelman wasn’t in a hurry and kept waiting for the car that was supposed to pick us up. At the last minute, it turned out that the car wouldn’t be coming, and then a frantic rush began. We managed to flag down two reckless drivers; Ptashka and I got into one with our suitcases, while Tutelman and Vorobyov got into the other, and a wild ride through the entire city began. The mud was terrible—snow, puddles, and potholes. We were splashed from head to toe, and even after returning to Paris, I found traces of Kharkiv mud on my suitcase. We made it to the train station on time, but then it turned out that, despite all of Vorobyov’s influence, it was impossible to get a private compartment for Ptashka and me, which was quite annoying, since I was heading straight to a concert in Kyiv the next day and wanted to get a good night’s sleep before it. Tutelman was worried; he ran around, called for the stationmaster, and finally, just as the train was about to depart, we stumbled into the car’s aisle. It looked as though we’d be sleeping right there in the aisle, but in fact, everything turned out relatively well. True, we didn’t get a private compartment, pillows, or bedding, but Ptasha was put in a small compartment with some female delegate, while Tutelman and I were placed in a large, four-person compartment with two other passengers; Tutilman went out of his way to be courteous, giving up his lower berth and offering an inflatable pillow he had in his suitcase. Then he kept me entertained with stories about how much he drinks and about how the violinist Kubelik arrived in Kharkiv with a Black valet. In America, he probably wouldn’t have been allowed into any decent hotel with a Black valet, but in Kharkiv, this made quite an impression.
Upon arriving in Kyiv on March 11, Prokofiev wrote: “In contrast to the ugly city of Kharkiv, Kyiv is very beautiful.”
And many years later, on May 6, 1932, we find a harrowing entry in his diary:
We overslept in Kharkiv this morning. In Lozova and at the following stations, the famine in Ukraine is evident; people are asking for bread, and there are pitiful, emaciated faces. The dining car, stocked with supplies from Moscow, is serving satisfactory meals…
Throughout the history of our beloved city, it has been visited by many people—both famous and ordinary. However, each of their memories of it is priceless to us. After all, thanks to them, we can see Kharkiv through their eyes and feel it in our hearts…
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