In the 1940s, Sergei Prokofiev’s music was highly popular abroad, in the Allied countries. The New York audience admired his cantata “Alexander Nevsky” performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, with the Westminster Choir and the American singer of Russian origin Jennie Tourel (born in Vitebsk). The New York Times praised it as a “composition with a unique dramatic effect that reminds the listeners about the current war in Russia.” However, this was not the cantata’s world premiere. “Alexander Nevsky” was first performed in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on May 17, 1939, conducted by Prokofiev himself.

The cantata was written before World War II but became especially relevant during the war years. In this context, the lines “Arise, Russian people!” and “In our native Russia, in great Russia, the enemy will never stand” sounded like a call to fight against the Nazis. The cantata was based on Prokofiev’s music for the film “Alexander Nevsky” by Sergei Eisenstein. Ahead of the concert in New York City, Prokofiev wrote an article for American newspapers where he described the process of transforming the film score into a concert composition, “After the film’s premiere, I had the idea to use the music for a symphonic work with a choir. Creating a cantata from the music was not an easy job since it demanded considerably more effort than the original film composition. Most importantly, I needed to put the cantata on solid musical footing, to build it according to musical forms, to develop it symphonically, and then to re-orchestrate everything, since symphonic orchestration is a completely different thing than orchestration for a film. Despite my attempts to approach the music from a purely symphonic standpoint during this process, a certain element of visuality remained from the film and Eisenstein. Some musicians have objected to this visuality, but for others, it facilitates the perception of music.”