Prokofiev began composing the Sixth Symphony in 1944. The Fifth, a symphony celebrating the essential goodness of man, would premier the following year and was being written contemporaneously. Yet this symphony is markedly darker, the pall of war much more evident. As he told his biographer, "Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds which cannot be healed. One man’s loved ones have perished, another has lost his health. This must not be forgotten."
Andre Previn leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Prokofiev's Symphony No. 6. in E-flat minor, Opus 111.
