John Wykoff

War and Peace is not like other operas. It is thoroughly cinematic, which is no surprise, considering that Prokofiev had experience in filmmaking and scoring. Most operas, especially twentieth-century operas, carry the audience deeper and deeper into the minds of its principal characters.

Classical music—that small corner of the record store—plays the past, present, and future in a hundred ways. Whether for nylon strings or CPUs, it is a thrilling and eclectic universe. John Wykoff is a Chancellor’s Fellow in music composition at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.