Sergei Prokofiev and Levon Atovmian

The name of Levon Atovmian is largely unknown. Yet he was a most important and influential figure in the development of Soviet culture: a musical impresario, company director, bureaucrat, publisher, editor, and arranger, as well as close friend and confidant of many distinguished Soviet composers. His role in Prokofiev’s later life cannot be overestimated. He played a leading, practical part in the composer’s return home in 1936. He promoted the commissioning of some of the most significant of Prokofiev’s later works, and arranged for piano all of his Soviet-period operas, oratorios, and ballets. He and Prokofiev exchanged an extensive professional and increasingly personal correspondence for over twenty years. The chapter is based on unique materials, including his memoirs, given to the author by Atovmian’s daughter. It explores their correspondence, and reveals the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Atovmian’s arrangement of an oratorio based on Prokofiev’s music for Ivan the Terrible.