Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives: Approach?

Someone recommended Prokofiev's Visions Fugitives to fill out the modern part of my current repertoire. I'm listening to them right now for the first time and they are beautiful.

I cannot wait to get started. I ordered a book of them on amazon prime. I know I can just print them out but I love my books, they're what I grew up with. Maybe eventually I'll go with digital like I did for reading-books but not quite yet.

Does anyone have recommendations on how to approach them? Are they like Chopin's Preludes in being short pieces? Should I pick a few to start with, and are there common "combinations" of them?

And is it grandiose to want to play all of them? I'd do it a few pieces a year, but I think the whole suite from memory would be a lovely addition to a fleshed out repertoire.

Thanks in advance for suggestions!

They're a lovely grab-bag of bagatelles. Just choose a couple at random and get started learning them - that would be my advice. I wouldn't feel any obligation to perform them as a complete set, but of course you could.

Hi, metaresolve! A few comments --

1 IMO, the Visions Fugitives are indeed very similar to the Chopin Preludes in intent. Both Chopin and Prokofiev seem to be trying to encapsulate various fully realized "mood-states" in a short time-frame -- haiku poems, if you will.

2 If you accept my premise above, I don't think either set of pieces is well served by simply presenting them all, although IMO Chopin works better than Prokofiev if you choose to program it that way. To me, it's better to assemble a bouquet of them that evoke a wide range of varying "moods". Overall, the various Prokofiev visions are shorter than Chopin's, and so I would elect for 12 - 14 of the Prokofiev, as opposed to 8 - 10 of the Chopin

3 From a technical perspective, the Fugitive Visions are IMO considerably less difficult than the Chopin Preludes. Of course, this is not to suggest that they are intermediate, but you do not encounter the prodigious technical difficulties of several of the Chopin Preludes.

I, too, discovered the Visions Fugitives (Mimoletnosti' in Russian) about 50 years ago and found them to be totally intriguing -- and, it was Prokofiev I could actually aspire to play! As I say, learn all 30, but present maybe 10 - 12 of "the best", whatever that means to you.

Thank you so much for the extensive response. Your image of the haiku is lovely.

I like the idea of presenting a "mood." Kind of like a poetry reading, right? Where a poet would pick a theme and pieces that created the effect they wanted. Learn a bunch and maybe present them in different sets according to mood.

I also learned to play contrasting pieces when doing the small competitions I did (I never did well, just third and an honorable mention once). So maybe a couple of slow with faster. I also like to mix and match based on keys.