Prokofiev: Le pas d'acier (The Steel Step or The Leap of Steel), Op. 41

The ballet was commissioned by impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who had been greatly impressed by the exhibition in Paris in 1925 of Russian contemporary artists at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, and was originally intended to "celebrate Soviet industrialization." Prokofiev wrote the score, based on a scenario by the Constructivist artist Georgi Yakulov and himself, in 1925–1926, much of it during his tour of the United States. Prokofiev wrote that his music represented "a move towards a Russian musical language, not that of the Fairy Tales of [the folklorist] Afanasyev, but one which could describe contemporary life. [...It] was a decisive step leading me towards chromaticism and diatonics [...] A whole series of themes is composed solely for the white keys." The original scenario was titled Ursignol, and was approved by Diaghilev in the autumn of 1925. It appears however that over the next two years the story-line was changed, against Yakulov's wishes, as Diaghilev made preparations for the first production. The original scenario was rooted in scenes of Soviet life, of which Yakulov had experience (but the émigrés Prokofiev and Diaghilev did not), involving speculators, sailors and workers, and with scenes in a station, a market and a factory, centered on life in the early Soviet Union. The factory scene features machines and sprocketed wheels as the setting for a danced romance between a sailor and a young girl worker. It is interesting that in the factory scene the chromatic ostinato figure of the viola is nearly the same as the one of Mosolov's contemporary "Iron Foundry". 00:00 - I. Appearance of Participants 02:51 - II. The Train of Trading Peasants 05:34 - III. Commissars 07:33 - IV. Toffee and Cigarette Vendors 09:49 - V. Orator 12:28 - VI. Sailor with a Bracelet and the Worker Girl 16:59 - VII. Change of the Scenery 20:00 - VIII. Sailor's Transformation into a Worker 22:19 - IX. Factory 25:51 - X. Hammers 31:48 - XI. Closing Scene