Fifty years after his death, Prokofiev is being re-examined. Why did he leave the West to return to the USSR where artists were stifled? “He was only semi-successful in the West. He didn’t attain the degree of fame that would satisfy his ambitions. In the West, he tried to be even more avant-garde than he was naturally, and it didn’t work. He was going along with the tastes of fashion, but it was against his nature. Then, when he returned to Russia, he wrote the ballet Romeo and Juliet, identified with it and produced an absolute masterpiece.”