Ann Cummings Inside the Music Communicate Buy a CD
Home Page
The performance act of smashing a mirror is a metaphor for Prokofiev's f minor sonata, Opus 1. The violence inherent within creativity is apparent in this act. Humans have the power to create and the power to destroy. Simultaneously, our inventions are fragile and susceptible to breakage and so we cannot invent something that can't be destroyed..

Sergei Prokofiev composed this (his first) piano sonata when he was 16 years of age. The sonata successfully captures the troubling dichotomy of human creativity... an unavoidable cycle of destruction interwoven with construction.

Piano Sonata in f minor
Opus 1
Sergei Prokofiev

Click to Listen

Animation 2011
Live Concert: Ann Cummings, Inside the Music 2001,
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
s