Soviet Union In the weeks prior to the Sixth Symphony's world premiere, Prokofiev's biographer Nestyev and the music critic complained that the composer was being "stingy" with explanations of a work they and the musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic found difficult. The former would later write that in this symphony Prokofiev "once again began to speak in a very difficult and at times esoteric language".
Nikolai Myaskovsky, the composer's colleague and longtime friend, also found the symphony challenging: "I began to understand the Prokofiev [Sixth Symphony] only on the third hearing and then I was won over: profound, but somewhat gloomy, and harshly orchestrated". The level of acclaim that the Sixth Symphony initially received from Soviet audiences and critics was comparable to that for the Fifth. The audience at the world premiere gave it a nearly 30-minute standing ovation. "It is wonderful, better than the usual Prokofiev", Schneerson told
Alexander Werth before the symphony's Moscow premiere. "It is philosophic, has the depth of Shostakovich. You'll see!" Likewise, Nestyev wrote in
Sovietskoye Iskusstvo that the symphony depicted a "nerve-wracking juxtaposition" of the "private world of modern man against the terrifying machinery of universal destruction", adding that its "noble humanism" placed it alongside the
Eighth Symphony by
Dmitri Shostakovich. He also described the finale as being "in the spirit of
Mozart or
Glinka", but that its cheerful mood was dispelled by the invasion of a "titan" whose "incessantly repeated fanfares" reawaken the tragic sonorities from earlier in the symphony. The music critic of
Leningradskaya Pravda praised the symphony as "another stunning victory for Soviet art", adding that "the optimism of this [work], its strong-willed intonations, character, and lyricism reflect the many facets of our people". Musicologist elicited Prokofiev's approval by comparing the symphony's opening to the scrape of a rusty key turning in a door lock, before revealing a "world of warmth, affection, and beauty". According to
Simon Morrison, its premiere was the "last unhampered, unmediated success" the composer would ever experience. Nevertheless, the Sixth was among the works excoriated by
Andrei Zhdanov and
Tikhon Khrennikov the following year during their
campaign against formalism in music. The latter lambasted what he perceived as its composer's inability to keep the symphony's "lively and limpid ideas" from being drowned in "contrived chaotic groanings", ultimately dismissing it as a "failure". Nestyev reversed his earlier approval, now decrying the symphony as "clearly formalist", an about-face which Atovmyan openly criticized. Nestyev later described the symphony as a "contest for complexity" which "made it difficult to grasp". Prokofiev felt deeply betrayed by Nestyev, whom he dubbed a "
Judas", and permanently severed his friendship with him. After Prokofiev's death, during the
Khrushchev Thaw, the Sixth was again reevaluated by Soviet critics.
Aram Khachaturian listed it among the works in which he felt that the composer maintained his "guiding principle" of "service to his people, to mankind". Boris Yarustovsky called the symphony a "true war symphony", ascribing to its predecessor only a "general feeling of patriotism", and opining that the work's numbering fated it to its tragic cast which "resemble almost all Russian sixth symphonies"; while Genrikh Orlov extolled it as "an outstanding symphony of our time". While maintaining his previous criticisms of the symphony, Nestyev also wrote that it was "not only an important event in the creative history of an outstanding musician, but also a unique artistic monument of its time".
In the West Abroad reaction to the Sixth was initially mixed. After the
New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra conducted by
Leopold Stokowski played the American premiere on November 24, 1949,
Musical America called the Sixth "the most personal, the most accessible, and emotionally revealing work of Prokofiev that has yet been played in this country". Paul Affelder, the music critic for the
Brooklyn Eagle, wrote that the Sixth was a "worthwhile piece of music", but objected to its structure: Those who expected a work of the sturdy, but joyful proportions of this composer's popular Fifth Symphony came away disappointed. For the Sixth ... is an austere symphony whose mood does not relax until the third movement... [Its] structure does not satisfy us—at least not on a first hearing... If the composer ever revises this work, he would like to see the third movement shortened and shorn of its dramatic ending—in other words, transformed into a bona fide scherzo—and then have everything resolve in a fourth movement of heavier proportions. The Sixth was sufficiently successful at its American premiere that Stokowski decided to reprogram it at a subsequent concert on December 6. That performance was broadcast live by
CBS and was the first time the symphony was heard on the radio in the United States. In response to the Swiss premiere in 1951,
Robert-Aloys Mooser attacked the Sixth as another of Prokofiev's "insane, base compositions". He added that the
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande was jeopardizing its reputation by playing it. A brief obituary for Prokofiev which was published in the spring 1953 issue of
Tempo said that the Sixth's large-scale architecture and attempts at optimism "did not really suit his talent". However, another critic writing in the same magazine in 1970 called the Sixth the "great, crowning" work of Prokofiev's symphonic output. ==References==