The composer Serge Prokofiev was not, on the whole, a very nice man. Selfish, misanthropic, casually anti-Semitic and cruel to his wife, he lacked the endearing worldliness of a Stravinsky or a Rachmaninoff, the charm to cover up his anti-social conduct.

Neighbors in Paris in the 1920s had him evicted for playing piano late at night. The violinist Nathan Milstein recalled his table manners: "fat spattering on his clothes, foam at the corners of his mouth." His savage tongue deterred well-intentioned fans. If there...