After all, the man doesn’t play the recorder or – even worse – the pan flute. But even the idea of adapting Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev’s compositions for guitar and then going on a concert tour with these one-instrument arrangements sounds pretty absurd. “The love of the three oranges”, schramm-schramm, “Peter and the wolf”, schrumm-schrumm. jeez
How good that we meet this person on a train and not in a concert hall in the radio play The odysseys of Sergei Sergeyevich. He doesn’t play there, but tells what he seems to prefer doing more than playing chords in the spirit of Prokofiev. In his chats, too, he cannot leave the Russian composer alone and refers to stories that Prokofiev wrote himself.
The Eiffel Tower marches to the Côte d’Azur for a swim.
And so this train becomes an odyssey. The guitarist tells the person sitting next to you, who you become as a listener, about the adventurous trip around the world that Prokofiev undertook in 1917, when the First World War was raging in Europe and, on top of that, civil war in his homeland. The occasional author and – yes, yes: guitarist Lucian Plessner invented this background story, the Prokofiev fan can definitely be imagined as his alter ego. Plessner actually arranged compositions by Prokofiev for his guitar for his two-part radio play. You are not necessarily what The odysseys of Sergei Sergeyevich worth listening to.
Rather, the stories by Prokofiev are more exciting, the composer also wrote them. Plessner discovered these texts by chance in the former apartment of the filmmaker Sergej Eisenstein. He translated them into German, and these stories are told on the train. On the one hand, it is about the concrete travel experience: Prokofiev left for the East, away from war and revolution, he wanted to leave Russia, ended up in Japan and finally in the USA – an exciting contemporary document. Second, they are grotesques. In one, the Eiffel Tower leaves its place and wanders south to take a dip on the Côte d’Azur. In another, there is a space-time shift, the centuries get mixed up, an Egyptian pyramid slides to America. A living pharaoh emerges from it, who has to be taught by a Mr. Mackintosh that the time of despotism and consequently of rulers like him is over.
In these days, when everything Russian is under general suspicion, these gems by Prokofiev are a small ray of hope. Because of their wit and the self-irony contained in them.
The odysseys of Sergei Sergeyevich, WDR 3, March 12, 2022, 7:04 p.m. Part 2 on March 19, 2022.