Discovering Music - Prokofiev Symphony No 5

David Nice joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Robertson for an exploration of the ideas and background to Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. It has been labelled as 'a symphony of the grandeur of the human spirit' ever since the composer used that phrase on Moscow radio around the time of the premiere in 1945. But what kind of grandeur is this - the triumph of the individual or the spirit of Soviet man? A Prokofiev authority and biographer, Nice considers the symphony in the light of the time in which it was written, comparing it to other works the composer wrote in the 1940s.