Editing Sergei Prokofiev (section)

=== War years ===
Prokofiev had been considering making an opera out of [[Leo Tolstoy]]'s epic novel ''[[War and Peace]]'', when news of the [[Operation Barbarossa|German invasion of the Soviet Union]] on 22 June 1941 made the subject seem all the more timely. Because of the war, he was evacuated together with a large number of other artists, initially to the [[Georgian SSR]], where he lived in [[Tbilisi]] from 11 November 1941 until 29 June 1942. While there he began to compose the original version of ''[[War and Peace (opera)|War and Peace]]''.<ref name="Morrison 2009 177">{{harvnb|Morrison|2009|p=177}}</ref> While in the Georgian SSR he also composed his [[String Quartet No. 2 (Prokofiev)|Second String Quartet]] and [[Piano Sonata No. 7 (Prokofiev)|Piano Sonata No. 7]].<ref>{{harvnb|Robinson|1987|p=530}}</ref> His relationship with the 25-year-old writer and librettist [[Mira Mendelson]] had finally led to his separation from his wife Lina. Despite their acrimonious separation, Prokofiev tried to persuade Lina and their sons to accompany him as evacuees out of Moscow, but Lina opted to stay.<ref name="Morrison 2009 177"/>

During the war years, restrictions on style and the demand that composers write in a 'socialist realist' style were slackened, and Prokofiev was generally able to compose in his own way. The [[Violin Sonata No. 1 (Prokofiev)|Violin Sonata No. 1]], Op. 80, ''The Year 1941'', Op. 90, and the ''Ballade for the Boy Who Remained Unknown'', Op. 93 all came from this period. In 1943, Prokofiev joined Eisenstein in [[Alma-Ata]], the largest city in [[Kazakhstan]], to compose more film music (''[[Ivan the Terrible (Prokofiev)|Ivan the Terrible]]''), and the ballet ''[[Cinderella (Prokofiev)|Cinderella]]'' (Op. 87), one of his most melodious and celebrated compositions. Early that year, he also played excerpts from ''War and Peace'' to members of the Bolshoi Theatre collective,<ref>{{harvnb|Morrison|2009|p=211}}</ref> but the Soviet government had opinions about the opera that resulted in many revisions.<ref group=n>"Prokofiev wrote the first version of ''War and Peace'' during the Second World War. He revised it in the late forties and early fifties, during the period of the 1948 Zhdanov Decree, which attacked obscurantist tendencies in the music of leading Soviet composers." [http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/04/war_and_peace_1.html "Prokofiev's ''War and Peace''"] by [[Alex Ross (music critic)|Alex Ross]], ''[[The New Yorker]]'', 4 March 2002, via Ross's blog. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171027235642/http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/04/war_and_peace_1.html|date=27 October 2017}}</ref> In 1944, Prokofiev composed his [[Symphony No. 5 (Prokofiev)|Fifth Symphony]] (Op. 100) at a composer's colony outside Moscow. He conducted its first performance on 13 January 1945, just a fortnight after the triumphant premieres on 30 December 1944 of his [[Piano Sonata No. 8 (Prokofiev)|Eighth Piano Sonata]] and, on the same day, the first part of Eisenstein's ''Ivan the Terrible''. With the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, which was programmed alongside ''Peter and the Wolf'' and the ''Classical'' Symphony (conducted by [[Nikolai Anosov]]), Prokofiev appeared to reach the peak of his celebrity as a leading Soviet composer.<ref>{{harvnb|Jaffé|1998|pp=182–84}}</ref>

On 20 January 1945, Prokofiev suffered a concussion after [[Syncope (medicine)|fainting]] in his apartment due to untreated chronic [[hypertension]].<ref>{{harvnb|Morrison|2009|p=252}}</ref> The composer [[Dmitry Kabalevsky]] visited him in hospital and found him semi-conscious, and "with a heavy heart, I left him, I thought it was the end."<ref>{{cite book |last1=McSmith |first1=Andy |title=Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, The Russian Masters – from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein – Under Stalin |date=2015 |publisher=The New Press |location=New York |isbn=978-1-59558-056-6 |page=272}}</ref> He never fully recovered from the injury, and, following medical advice, restricted his composing activity.<ref>{{harvnb|Jaffé|1998|p=186}}</ref>