Sergey Prokofiev: diaries 1907-1914 - prodigious youth Edited by Anthony Phillips Faber & Faber, 800pp, £25 ISBN 080144540X

An Oxford anecdote has the late Isaiah Berlin referring to Prokofiev as "the most stupid of great composers". If Berlin did say this, he probably had the idea from his sharp-tongued friend Stravinsky, who in turn probably had in mind Diaghilev's reported dismissal of Prokofiev as "practically an idiot".

Prokofiev's reputation has always been odd. He is the great composer for children, splashy pianists, orchestral conductors who like to make an effect, and ballet dancers. As a result, certain of his works - the Classical Symphony, Peter and the Wolf, Lieutenant Kizhe and Romeo and Juliet - have a permanent place in the concert repertoire that other composers might well envy. And yet the snobs, the artistic opinion-formers and the scholars have, until recently, almost entirely ignored him.

While the upside of this lopsided reputation is easy to explain (the flood of memorable melodies, the colour, energy and brilliance of the music), the downside is more complicated. Some of the criticism is personal. Prokofiev was notoriously so abrasive and self-involved that even close friends recoiled, and decision-makers - Diaghilev, Balanchine, Koussevitzky and others - who began by promoting him eventually tired of him. Some see this irritating character reflected in the music, which they find trivial, one-dimensional and heartless, too immediate and instinctive, and lacking in inner substance.

Then there is the complex issue of his so-called "return" to the Soviet Union from the west in the 1930s. Rachmaninov tried to dissuade him - it seemed madness that he should deliberately walk back into the killing fields from which he had luckily escaped. For years the composer was seen either as a sort of defector, cynically bought by Stalin's shilling, or simply as so irresponsible that he could not see what was in front of his own eyes. Recent commentators have been more generous, noting the instability of western Europe as it lurched towards war and the very great number of other Russians, often distinguished ones, who took the same decision. Reassessment has also been helped by the modern drive to bring back his less-performed music.

The publication in English of Prokofiev's diaries heralds another upheaval in his reputation. The Russian-language edition of these writings, which stretch from the composer's boyhood to the eve of his return to Russia, appeared in 2002. It was the heroic result of years spent by the composer's elder son, Sviatoslav, and his grandson Serge transcribing thousands of pages of manuscript, nearly all written in the composer's bizarre vowel-less shorthand (ths s hw Srg Prkfv wrt!).

The result shifted critical debate to a new level. Here was a flood of factual information, telling us exactly when and where Prokofiev wrote what, and when and under what circumstances the finished work was performed. Much information previously treated as authoritative was shown to be false, and few composers in history, it seemed, had ever documented in such fine detail the mysterious daily task of trying to write down music on paper. But that was not all. These diaries also provided a magnificent and downright obsessive report, sometimes hour by hour, of almost everyone the composer ever met, from the incredibly celebrated, great, good and ugly of his age to casual acquaintances.

Now Anthony Phillips has made this extraordinary achievement available to English readers. And his work is a revelation, even to those who could read the original Russian. Not only has he translated the composer's words into an English prose that follows in masterly fashion almost every nuance of the composer's unpredictable effusions, but with great tact he has done what the junior Prokofievs did not do, surrounding the text with a careful apparatus of notes to show us exactly where we are in a story with a cast of thousands.

Everyone who reads this first volume (a second is in progress) will pick their own plums. I find it is the small things that move me most. Take August 1913, when the composer was staying with friends in the Crimea. The previous months had been a tumult of graduation performances and compositions, the completion of his Second Piano Concerto, the suicide of his close friend Max Schmidthof, a trip to Paris and London where he saw the Diaghilev troupe in action and much more:

3 August

At lunch everyone was very gay. I read out from one of Chekhov's letters a description of a menagerie in Naples, containing the following phrase: "Seeing an octopus guzzling another animal is a truly revolting spectacle". The expression was seized upon, and the moment someone started tucking into an appetizing morsel or stuffing a juicy water-melon into their mouth, there would be heard from the other end of the table, "guz-z-zling octopus", the adjective being pronounced with noisy relish . . .

Phillips's enthusiasm, tact and sympathy, not to mention his wide knowledge of music and history, have produced a work that everyone interested in music and Russian culture of the past hundred years should read. Even if you care little for Prokofiev's music, you will find yourself "guz-z-zling" this book, gobbling it whole as the wolf gobbles the duck in his masterpiece for children. And it will go on quacking inside you.

Gerard McBurney is artistic programming adviser to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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