Prokofiev

A difficult student at the St Petersburg Conservatory, who played his own First Piano Concerto at his graduation recital and startled the jury. He left Russia in 1918, spent nearly twenty years in America and Paris, and in 1936 chose to return to the Soviet Union — a decision still hard to explain — after which he worked under censorship for the rest of his life. He died on the same day as Stalin, and the obituaries were buried.

His music has a hard, mechanical clarity: the piano written as a percussion instrument, melodies swerving suddenly into unexpected keys. The Classical Symphony was a joke he made at twenty-six, pretending Haydn was still alive, and it turned out to be the first brick of neoclassicism. The Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet is one of the most instantly recognisable passages of the century.