In spite of the political unrest in his native Russia—or, perhaps, because of it—Sergei Prokofiev spent the summer of 1917 in the country, writing the kind of symphony that Joseph Haydn might have written had he lived in the twentieth century.

It was, in a way, a daring move for a composer whose forceful, modernistic style had gained him the reputation of someone with little interest in the status quo.

In this hour, Sergei Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony—and the symphonies of Joseph Haydn that inspired it.