Above: Drawing of Serge Prokofieff by his son, Oleg.

Oleg Prokofieff, the composer’s son, introduced his mother Lina at the 50th Anniversary Concert:

I don’t need to tell you anything about the story of Peter and the Wolf, but I can recall for you my first memory of it. As you know, it was composed in the beginning of 1936 and the first great gala performance happened in July of that year, coinciding with the time our family just moved from Paris to Moscow. At that time I was seven years old and I discovered a new world around me. And when people ask me, “Do you remember the first time that you heard Peter and the Wolf?” they expect that I loved it enormously. But in fact, I have difficulties in remembering that, because it was just a part of all the new impressions that I was feeling in Russia. And indeed I do remember that just around the first performance I was taken to the opening of the so-called Palace Pioneers, with all these boys in white shirts and red ties – it’s kind of the equivalent of Soviet Boy Scouts. It was all very strange to me. All the same, my Russian wasn’t very good at this time, so I didn’t quite understand what was going about. Its one of the many impressions I have at that time.

If fact, I really learned to like this music with age, which is probably different from impressions of other people who knew it from the beginning and loved it immediately. When I came to England (as an adult) I was invited several times to narrate the story myself and it was then that I discovered fully all the qualities of this piece. But could I have imagined at that time, in my childhood, that one day here in New York I will be introducing my own mother performing this piece for the first time. So ladies and gentlemen, here is my mother.

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