On March 5, 1953, a small group carried a coffin through the back alleys of Moscow because the main roads were closed for Joseph Stalin's funeral. Sergei Prokofiev had died the same day, and only about 30 people attended his service. This episode traces the life that led to that moment: a boy composing at five in the Lydian mode because he refused to touch the black keys, a chess fanatic by seven, an opera composer by nine, and a St. Petersburg Conservatory student who kept charts of his older classmates' mistakes. His dissonant Second Piano Concerto drew complaints that it sounded like screeching cats.

After the 1917 revolution, Prokofiev secured permission from Anatoly Lunacharsky to leave, arguing they were both revolutionaries. We follow his years of financial struggle in America and Paris, his marriage to the singer Lina, his adoption  ...