Editors Note: We're blogging through We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Ukrainian composer best known for his ballet ‘Peter and the Wolf’. He also composed other works such as ‘Dance of the Knights’, and ‘The Love for Three Oranges’.
Prokofiev wrote his first piano piece at five years of age, and his first opera ,’The Giant’, at nine.
Besides being a fantastic composer, Prokofiev was also an amazing chess player. He was friends with Jose Raul Capablanca, who was the world chess champion at the time, and beat him.
Prokofiev’s first wife was Carolina Codina, with whom he had two sons, Sviatoslav and Oleg. Prokofiev and Codina separated after several years of marriage, and Prokofiev married Mira Mendelson, who died in 1968. She had no children with Prokofiev.
Prokofiev died before Mendelson. He died on March 5, 1953 in Russia.