Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 08/27/2014, uploaded on 09/30/2014

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Sergei Prokofiev composed three piano sonatas during the brutal and unforgiving years of World War II that have become known simply as the War Sonatas. When Nazi Germany unleashed its brutal hammer stroke against the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin and his government was forced to turn its attention outward. Restrictions on composers and other artists were temporary relaxed, and Prokofiev found a momentary freedom to express his own artistic voice. Many compositions flowed from Prokofiev’s pen during this time, most tinged with biting ironies and tragedy. On the surface, one may view these works, of which the War Sonatas are certainly a part, as the composer’s reflections on a world engulfed in war. Yet, beneath the surface, it is more likely there were a personal criticism, in the only outlet available, of Stalin’s ruthless and oppressive rule. Of these works, the War Sonatas lie in proximity to a particularly tragic story.

In June of 1939, Prokofiev’s close friend and colleague. Vsevolod Meyerhold, was arrested by Stalin’s Secret Police just before he was to begin rehearsing the composer’s latest opera Semyon Kotko. The following year, on February 2, Meyerhold was shot. His death was never publicly acknowledged, let alone even known about until after Stalin’s oppressive rule had ended. However, only a month after Meyerhold’s arrest, his wife was brutally murdered, and was not so neatly swept under the rug. In the wake of losing a close friend and the news of his widow’s murder, Prokofiev received an official request to compose a celebratory piece for Stalin’s sixtieth birthday. After feigning such joy and admiration for Stalin, Prokofiev set about later that year to compose his bitterly tragic War Sonatas.

Subtitled “Stalingrad,” the Seventh Piano Sonata is the shortest of the War Sonatas. Composed between 1939 and 1942, it was premiered by Sviatoslav Richter in Moscow on January 18, 1943. Ironically, the sonata later won a Stalin Prize. Cast in three movements, two rhythmic and energetic movements frame the lyrical and sentimental central Andante. Of the three, the toccata-like finale is the most famous, which through its virtuosity manages to bring the sonata to a triumphant conclusion.     Joseph DuBose

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Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83       SergeiProkofiev

Sergei Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7 was composed in 1942, and premiered by Svyatoslav Richter in Moscow in 1943.  The first movement, Allegro Inquieto, is written in a traditional classical sonata form. The tempo and rhythms are very agitated and disturbing. The opening theme is jesting and rigorous, and depicts many sonorous cluster-like chords. The second theme is a deliberate, pensive theme that seems to rove both through various keys and harmonies, and motifs. This long section results in an extremely chromatic and violent development. After a final fragment of the main theme, the movement ends with a calm, quick roll of the B-flat major chord, the only full statement of the key of the piece.

The second movement, Andante Caloroso, has an opening theme based on Robert Schumann's song, Wehmut (“Sadness”), which appears in Schumann's Liederkreis, Op. 39. This opening theme quickly splits up into an extremely chromatic section which moves through various tonal centers. After a clanging, bell-like culmination, the music slows and melts into the opening theme once more.

The third movement, Precipitato,once described as "an explosive burst of rock 'n' roll with a chromatic edge", is a toccata which bravely asserts the key of the sonata through a more diatonic harmonic language than found in the first movement. The toccata comes to a climax in a raging recapitulation of the main theme, until the piece finally ends victoriously in a thundering cascade of octaves.     Ketevan Kartvelishvili

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.