Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieut. Kije was written in the early thirties as a score to accompany a movie about a Potemkin-village-like farce concerning the heroism of a non-existent officer in the Russian military and the tangled web that ensues when the Czar wants to decorate him. Poking fun at the Czar was perfectly okay in the early years of the Staliin regime. Poking fun at the military would become a touchier subject later on.
We start in Russia this Sunday and end up in 20th-century America with lots of stops in-between, and of course we check in on our series of Mozart symphonies with Number 14 this week.
