Diaries 1907 1914: Prodigious Youth

Anthony Phillips learnt Russian in the 'Secret Classrooms' of National Service in the 1950s and later at Oxford. The language continued to play an important part during his later career in music administration, during which he became general manager of London's Royal Festival Hall. Story of a Friendship, his translation of Shostakovich's letters to Isaak Glikman, was published by Faber in 2000, and Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters (with Rosamund Bartlett) by Penguin Classics in 2004.

"The diaries are a revelation . . . . Their strengths are their lively prose and clarity, their capacity to recreate the atmosphere of place and time, and their flair for dialogue, qualities happily maintained in Anthony Phillips's excellent translation. . . . The climax of the first volume of Prokofiev's diaries is a fascinating account of the composer's triumph in the prestigious Rubinstein Prize, the piano competition for students graduating from the Conservatory, with a performance of his Second Piano Concerto, in April 1914. It was the only occasion in the history of the St. Petersburg Conservatory that a student graduated with a performance of his own concerto." Orlando Figes, New York Review of Books, May 10, 2007