The Year 1941 (Prokofiev) The Year 1941 (Prokofiev) Sergei Prokofiev wrote the symphonic suite The Year 1941 (Op. 90) in 1941. Prokofiev, along with other composers, was evacuated to the Caucasus when Germany started attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. It was under such circumstances that Prokofiev began work on this symphonic suite. He was working on his epic opera "War and Peace" and the "String Quartet No. 2" at the same time. The whole suite lasts for around 15 minutes. The suite is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets,
Sergei Prokofiev found employment as a soil engineer, employed by one of his former fellow-students, Dmitri Sontsov, to whose estate in the Ukrainian steppes the Prokofievs moved. By the time of Prokofiev's birth, Maria—having previously lost two daughters—had devoted her life to music; during her son's early childhood, she spent two months a year in Moscow or St Petersburg taking piano lessons. Sergei Prokofiev was inspired by hearing his mother practising the piano in the evenings, mostly works by Chopin and Beethoven, and wrote his first piano composition at the age of five, an "Indian Gallop", which was written down by his