Uploaded November 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
- Composer: Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (23 April 1891 -- 5 March 1953)
- Orchestra: Russian State Symphony Orchestra
- Choir: Russian State Symphony Capella
- Conductor: Valeri Polyansky
- Year of recording: 2003
Translation of text on the poster: "to raise our happiness and peace!"
Flourish, Mighty [Home]land, cantata for chorus & orchestra, Op. 114, written in 1947.
This composition was written in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. Soviet composers were routinely expected to satisfy the demands of state occasions, and Prokofiev did so several times. but hardly with enthusiasm. Flourish, Mighty Homeland lasts less than ten minutes in performance and is a relatively modest work, especially when compared with the composer's Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution (1936 - 1937), a massive work requiring five hundred performers and containing veiled satire. Finished during Stalin's first reign of terror, Prokofiev wisely withdrew it and the work was never heard in his lifetime. In this Op. 114 choral piece he deliberately kept the music simple, refusing to give it the grandiosity Soviet arts commissars wanted.
Using a text by Evgeni Dolmatovsky, Prokofiev opens the work with a charming march played on the trumpet. The mixed chorus then enters to introduce a rather solemn but attractive theme a cappella. For the remainder of the work the chorus dominates the proceedings, with the orchestra relegated to an accompanimental role and brief musical commentary between choral passages, although it does reprise the opening march at the close. This is a charming but minor effort whose greatest strengths are its contrasting, memorable themes and subdued character.
- Composer: Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (23 April 1891 -- 5 March 1953)
- Orchestra: Russian State Symphony Orchestra
- Choir: Russian State Symphony Capella
- Conductor: Valeri Polyansky
- Year of recording: 2003
Translation of text on the poster: "to raise our happiness and peace!"
Flourish, Mighty [Home]land, cantata for chorus & orchestra, Op. 114, written in 1947.
This composition was written in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. Soviet composers were routinely expected to satisfy the demands of state occasions, and Prokofiev did so several times. but hardly with enthusiasm. Flourish, Mighty Homeland lasts less than ten minutes in performance and is a relatively modest work, especially when compared with the composer's Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution (1936 - 1937), a massive work requiring five hundred performers and containing veiled satire. Finished during Stalin's first reign of terror, Prokofiev wisely withdrew it and the work was never heard in his lifetime. In this Op. 114 choral piece he deliberately kept the music simple, refusing to give it the grandiosity Soviet arts commissars wanted.
Using a text by Evgeni Dolmatovsky, Prokofiev opens the work with a charming march played on the trumpet. The mixed chorus then enters to introduce a rather solemn but attractive theme a cappella. For the remainder of the work the chorus dominates the proceedings, with the orchestra relegated to an accompanimental role and brief musical commentary between choral passages, although it does reprise the opening march at the close. This is a charming but minor effort whose greatest strengths are its contrasting, memorable themes and subdued character.
