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 concert tour in the Soviet Union. Over the course of more than two months, he spent time in Moscow and Leningrad (as St Petersburg had been renamed), where he enjoyed a very successful staging of "The Love for Three Oranges" in the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1928, Prokofiev completed his Third Symphony, which was broadly based on his unperformed opera "The Fiery Angel". The conductor Serge Koussevitzky characterized the Third as "the greatest symphony since Tchaikovsky's Sixth." In the meantime, however, Prokofiev, under the influence of the teachings of Christian Science, had turned against the expressionist style and the subject matter