Prokofiev was born into a middle-class family. His mother was an amateur pianist, and the young Prokofiev started composing piano pieces when he was five. His output, even as a child, was prodigious. Although his parents were worried about his being committed to a musical career so young, he was enrolled at the conservatory in St. Petersburg in 1904, when he was only 13. He stayed there until 1914, studying orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov and counterpoint with Lyadov, although he did...