Richard Aldrich of the New York Times reviews Sergei Prokofiev's local debut, on Nov. 20, 1918: "It is for Prokofieff the mere breaking of a butterfly on a wheel to perform other men's music. But the gracious butterfly of Scriabine was metamorphosed into a gigantic prehistoric pterodactyl with horrid snout and crocodile wings which ominously whirred as they flew over the pianist. Ah! a Jabberwock, it was, not a butterfly!" How the art of criticism has declined.
