The Artistic Exploration Of Prokofiev's Piano Adaptation "Cinderella" Op.102

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev, a composer,a pianist and a conductor of Soviet Union in the 20th century,deserves fully the title as one of the famous modern musicians. He has spent the whole life composing various and wonderful music works, which make brilliant contribution to the treasury of musical works in every field.The ballet Cinderella Op.87 belongs to the important late productions of Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev. And its unique charming attracts those composers a lot, so they have arranged the work Cinderella Op.87 into other three piano pieces with the title unchanged. The serial numbers of these pieces are Op.95, Op.97 and Op.102, among which the Op.102 is different from the remaining two. In this work, there are no other minor characters appeared, and what mainly focused on are the personality of Cinderella, the unruly images that Cinderella's stepmother and her two sisters have showed, and the sincere love between Cinderella and the prince. Besides, the work applies a bright melody and adopts plain but harmonious languages, using some motifs of special styles and imitation of instruments to form lively characters, to reveal miraculously their distinctive characteristics, to express thoroughly the emotion hidden deeply in the inner world of those characters, thus making sharp contrast between the fine "positive image" and the ferocious "negative image". Taking account of the above mentioned factors, this thesis will choose the Cinderella Op.102 as the object of study and will make analysis on the basis of a large deal of information, including literature works and music archives etc. The concrete content of study is arranged as following:The first chapter starts with Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev's life experience and his style of composition in order to help us understand his works of the ballet, and then it gives out a brief presentation about Cinderella Op.102 on its crating process and plot, hence enabling us to gain a comprehensive understanding of Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev's ballets and music.The second chapter makes deep analysis and discussions on Cinderella Op.102. It will find out the the music of this ballet that corresponds to its piano transcription, and then analyzes three music features embodied including lyricism, characters of fairy tales, and the nature of dance, focusing on the correspondence between characterization and the rhythm and how to imitate the sound effect created by symphony orchestras through methods of key-touching and pedaling.The third part is the interpretation on the play of Cinderella Op.102. The author will study from the emotion, melody, and the difficulties of performing techniques according to his/her own experience of performances, hoping to offer some effective advice and help for anyone who will play Cinderella Op.102 in the future, and therefore the excellent work can be better presented.The forth part will discuss the topic at the theoretical level, concluding the artistic value of the ballet Cinderella Op.102.