Prokofiev Scythian Suite, Op. 20

In the summer of 1914, Prokofiev, the then-emerging enfant terrible of Russian music, traveled to London to meet with the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev commissioned the young composer to write a ballet with a prehistoric or fairy-tale scenario – hoping, perhaps, for the same kind of success he had recently enjoyed with the like-themed ballets of Stravinsky. The composer settled on a theme centered on a prehistoric tribe of barbarians, the Scythians, known to drink blood and engage in other similarly gruesome practices. The immediate musical result was Ala and Lolli (1914-1915), which Prokofiev first presented to Diaghilev in the form of a nearly complete piano score. Diaghilev, however, rejected the work as too close in spirit to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, fearing comparisons to the still-new succès du scandale. To placate Prokofiev, Diaghilev commissioned from the dejected composer a new ballet, Chout (1915). Before fulfulling that commission, though, Prokofiev turned his at