The curse of mental associations: When I listen to Prokofiev I always feel sorry for poor Schoenberg. Both were modernists who had scandal-causing premieres in their early days, both composed into the early 1950s (when they died within 2 years of each other), yet Prokofiev departed this world as a composer with a wide public following and many recordings of his works, while Schoenberg remained the rarely performed (and rarely recorded) Bogeyman of serious music long after this death.
