Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Sonata in D Op.94bis, for Violin and Piano

Moderato
Scherzo
Andante
Allegro con brio

This work, published as Prokofiev's Second Violin Sonata, owes its conception to a particular person and a particular place. The place was Perm, in the Urals, where, in 1943 he had been evacuated like many other prominent Soviet artists in the face of the Nazi invasion. Far from the fighting, Prokofiev seems to have found the tranquility required for sustained creative work, and aware of his country's struggle for survival, seems for the first time to have been able to the State's demand for optimistic, tuneful "Socialist Realist" music with something like genuine willingness. His music of this wartime period, most notably the bSecond String Quartet "on Kabardinian Themes" (1941), the opera "War and Peace" (1941-3) and the Fifth Symphony (1943) is marked by this melodious, expansive, and, at times heroic vein of inspiration; and it was in this mood that Prokofiev wrote his Flute Sonata Op.94 in the summer of 1943. The person was the great violinist David Oistrakh, who persuaded Prokofiev to make a violin transcription of the sonata the following year. The closeness of the violin's register to the flute's made this a relatively straightforward task, and Prokofiev duly published the transcription as his Violin Sonata No.2, Op.94bis. However, the published numbering conceals a chronological twist; this second sonata actually being Prokofiev's first to be published! The First Sonata, begun in 1939, was not to be completed until 1946.

The Sonata is in four movements, with an overall mood of lucidity and cheerfulness. It has been suggested that the slow / fast / slow / fast arrangement of the movements is based on the Baroque trio-sonata, but it more closely resembles the standard symphonic layout as seen in the contemporary Fifth Symphony - the flowing moderato opening movement being a parallel to contemporary moderato symphonic first movements by sduch composers as Miaskovsky and Shostakovich as well as Prokofiev himself. There follows one of Prokofiev's finest scherzos, "a thing of winged elegance" writes Martinov, and two classically-measured movements complete the sonata - the steady Andante and a brilliantly vivacious finale.

R. G. Bratby, 1997


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