Composed as a soundtrack for Eisenstein’s film of the same name, Alexander Nevsky, a dramatization of the thirteenth-century conflict between the Russian people and Teutonic invaders, struck a resounding chord in the Soviet Union at a time when war with Hitler’s Germany seemed inevitable. In 1939 Prokofiev re-arranged the score as a cantata for concert performance, and the work soon established itself as one of the most popular Russian choral works of the twentieth century. Perhaps Prokofiev’s most popular work, the Suite from Lieutenant Kijé is taken from incidental music for a satirical film which follows the fortunes of a fictitious officer, the creation of a bureaucratic blunder.