Prokofiev Piano

The challenges of Prokofiev’s ‘War Sonatas’ trilogy may be fearsome, but Steven Osborne is one of those rare musicians who can bring light and clarity (as well as phenomenal reserves of power and concentration) to bear on some of the most ferociously volatile and brilliant piano music written in the twentieth century.

With this new volume, Alexandre Melnikov has chosen to delve into three distinct periods of the composer’s career, ranging from the dazzling though seldom-heard No. 4 to the magisterial No. 9. In between those two, the sonata no. 7 once again evokes the troubled atmosphere characteristic of the three so-called ‘war sonatas’. Sviatoslav Richter claimed to have learned the piece in a mere four days.

Avie introduces the brilliant young Romanian pianist Alexandra Silocea who offers some of her signature repertoire on her debut recording, the first five Piano Sonatas of Prokofiev. Dubbed “Alexandra the Great” by Gramophone who announced her debut recording, the 26-year-old trained in Vienna and Paris, and is now resident in the UK. In 2003, while studying at Vienna University for Music and Performing Arts, she was awarded the Herbert von Karajan Scholarship, the latest in a string of prizes from competitions throughout Europe. Alexandra made her professional debut in 2008 with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Recital debuts followed in 2009 at the Musikverein in Vienna, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York, and le Salon de Musique in Paris.

26 year-old Denis Kozhukhin arrives on the recording scene fully-fledged, like Athena springing from the head of Zeus. Intellect is central: I’ve never heard so much revelatory detail in Prokofiev’s triptych of dark and painful masterpieces. Kozhukhin has a way of bringing out the detail of the inner parts, or even a usually inconsequential-seeming bass line, that highlights the drama instead of distracting from it; there’s so much internal play in the droll march-scherzo of the Sixth Sonata, so much genius revealed about the way Prokofiev elaborates or dislocates the minuet theme at the heart of the Eighth. The touch is one that the composer-pianist would probably applaud: clear rather than dry, recorded with superb presence and ringing treble, bringing in the sustaining pedal with mesmerising care only to nuance the more pensive themes.

This is the second and final disc in a cycle of Sergei Prokofiev’s piano concertos with pianist Olli Mustonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. Of the first volume, Gramophone wrote: 'How many times have I regretted a shortage of fantasy, flair and fairy-tale imagination in recordings of the Prokofiev piano concertos? Well, here is a disc that takes all those qualities to the top'.

The young Kissin was able to work wonders in Prokofiev–above all the Sixth Sonata (Kissin in Tokyo - Yevgeny Kissin). Regrettably, the mature Kissin recently delivered highly disappointing live performances of the Second and Third Concertos (Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3), indeed, regardless of the predictable rave in the British press. This 1994 recording of the First and Third Concertos is unquestionably very good, especially the youthful First, although competition is very strong–from Graffman/Szell (Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3) and Argerich/Dutoit (Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3 / Bartok: Piano Concerto No. 3) in this coupling, and from the complete sets by Berman/Gutierrez/Järvi, Toradze/Gergiev and Krainev/Kitaenko.

These early recordings (1950-52) were made while Sviatoslav Richter was still playing this kind of virtuoso Russian music, an area he largely abandoned later in his life. If you enjoy the trivial Rimsky and Glazunov concertos, you'll get a real kick out of the colorful virtuosity of these performances, pretty well conveyed by the recordings although they don't really do justice to Richter's tone. But Richter did make another recording of the Prokofiev, with Karel Ancerl, which is currently available on Supraphon and has a much better orchestra. In either case, the pianist gives this insouciant music all the juice it needs.

Sviatoslov Richter was a friend of the composer, and he played all of this music in Prokofiev's presence. His performances have since acquired almost cult status among pianists–a reputation they richly deserve. The Fifth Piano Concerto is a pithy, technically difficult work in five short movements, which Richter plays as though he had composed them himself. The Eighth Sonata, by contrast, was composed during the Second World War, and the contrast between simple lyricism and horrifying violence leaves no doubt whatsoever as to what the composer was attempting to describe. These mid-price reissues sound better than ever, and artistically speaking, they are priceless.

In his first album with Mirare, the pianist Lukas Geniušas offers us a recital featuring two early masterpieces of Prokofiev coupled with the only sonata the composer penned in Western Europe.
Even though the earlier works are four decades distant from the latter, a steady feature remains: Prokofiev’s feelings for his beloved Russia.

This disc is made up of much praised earlier issues from 1977 and 1979. The recordings were remastered effectively in 1985 and 1992 (Prokofiev pieces). The concertos and Islamey were particularly praised when first issued and that praise holds good today and this disc contains some of the most satisfying performances of this repertoire currently available.