Old critical reviews of Prokofiev and his work

Here is New York Times music critic James Gibbons Huneker's opinion (from a 1918 issue) of Prokofiev's first piano concerto:

The First Piano Concerto of Prokofiev was in one movement, but compounded of many rhythms and recondite noises...The first descending figure -- it is hardly a theme -- is persistently affirmed in various nontonalities by the orchestra, the piano all the while shrieking, groaning, howling, fighting back, and in several instances it seemed to rear and bite the hand that chastised it...There were moments when the piano and orchestra made sounds that evoked not only the downfall of empires, but also of fine crockery, the fragments flying in all directions. He may be the Cossack Chopin for the next generation -- this tall, calm young man. The diabolic smiles press upon you as his huge hands, the hands of a musical primate, tear up trees and plow the soil. That fetching, old expression, 'Hell to pay and no pitch hot,' applies to Prokofiev: only he owns his Hades and has the necessary pitch in abundance.

And now an excerpt from "Musical America" about the 1916 premiere of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite in St. Petersburg:

Crashing Siberias, volcano hell, Krakatoa, sea-bottom crawlers. Incomprehensible? So is Prokofiev. A splendid tribute was paid to his Scythian Suite in Petrograd by Glazunov. The poor tortured classicist walked out of the hall during the performance of the work. No one walked out of Aeolian Hall, but several respectable pianists ran out.