Chout (The Tale of the Buffoon), Suite, Op. 21bis

Program notes

About the Work

Chout (a French rendering of the Russian word for ‘buffoon’ or ‘jester’) was Prokofiev’s first ballet for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He composed it in 1915 and extensively revised it for the 1921 Paris premiere, with designs by the avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov. The story, drawn from Russian folk tales, is a grotesque, knockabout comedy: a clever buffoon outwits seven other buffoons (and a merchant along the way) through a series of increasingly absurd deceptions involving a ‘magic’ whip, a disguise as a woman and a faked death. From this riotous score Prokofiev drew a substantial twelve-movement orchestral suite.

The music is brash, brilliant and folk-flavoured, full of Prokofiev’s youthful energy and love of the grotesque: stamping dances, garish orchestral colours, lyrical interludes and sardonic humour. It is less subtle than his later ballets but enormously vivid and entertaining, a riot of orchestral invention. As the substantial closing work of Noseda’s programme, it sends the audience off with Prokofiev at his most exuberant and theatrical.

What to Listen For

This is a sequence of twelve vivid scenes, so enjoy the colour and contrast. Listen for the brash, stamping dance rhythms and the folk-tune flavour that runs through the score: Prokofiev drawing on Russian popular idioms but twisting them with his characteristic harmonic ‘wrong notes’ and grotesque humour. There are wild, raucous numbers (the buffoons’ antics, market scenes) set against gentler, more lyrical interludes (such as the dance of the buffoons’ daughters).

Listen, too, for Prokofiev’s brilliant and sometimes deliberately crude orchestration: blaring brass, scurrying woodwinds, percussion adding to the knockabout energy. The mood is comic, even cartoonish, full of theatrical flair and physical exuberance. You don’t need to follow the convoluted plot; simply enjoy the riot of invention and the sheer rhythmic vitality of young Prokofiev writing for the most glamorous ballet company in the world.