Classical Music | Violin Music

Sergei Prokofiev

Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94 bis  Play

Dmitri Berlinsky Violin
Elena Baksht Piano

Recorded on 10/03/2006, uploaded on 01/17/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

When the war engulfing the rest of the European continent came to the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany’s brutal hammer stroke in 1941, Sergei Prokofiev, along with many other artists, were evacuated away from the major cities and the Nazi’s ruthless advance. In August of that year, Prokofiev was taken to Nalchik, the capital city of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic in the North Caucasus, some nine hundred miles south of Moscow. Late, he was in Perm in the Ural Mountains. While Stalin and the Soviets were forced to focus their attention on the threat from the Nazis, they temporary relaxed the restrictions that they had placed on their artists, leaving composers such as Prokofiev to indulge their true creative impulses. Many of the works that flowed from the composer’s pen during this time may have perhaps been the expression of anti-Stalin sentiments. Yet, flying in the face of the tragedy of Stalin’s regime and a world engulfed in war, is the blithe and lyrical Second Violin Sonata.

The Second Violin Sonata, however, was not originally composed as such. In 1942, Prokofiev composed his Flute Sonata in D major. At the urging of his friend, the violinist David Oistrakh, Prokofiev arranged the sonata for violin the following year. Both share the same opus number, and while the origins as a flute sonata are still present in the work’s inherent lyricism, it is the violin transcription that has become the most popular. Oistrakh premiered the work on June 17, 1944 in Moscow. Comprising four movements, the sonata embodies a typical Romantic form. A lyrical and elegant opening sonata form is followed by a typical Prokofievian scherzo full of wit and energy. The Andante third movement opens with an arching tune for the violin, but later indulges in jazz-inspired inflections during its middle section. Lastly, the Finale provides a joyous conclusion.       Joseph DuBose

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Sonata No.2 in D Major, Op.94 bis             Sergei Prokofiev

Moderato; Scherzo: Presto; Andante;  Allegro con Brio

This wonderful work started its life as a sonata for flute and piano.  When Prokofiev began composing it in 1942, it made a cheerful and welcome respite from feverish hours spent on his opera based on War and Peace.  Commissioned by the Committee on Artistic Affairs, Prokofiev said the new Sonata was intended "to sound in bright and transparent Classical tones," presumably the same tones that inhabited his very accessible and popular "Classical" Symphony, also in D Major, and his first Violin Concerto.

The Sonata's themes are simple and engaging, its rhythms uncomplicated, its emotions direct and resolutely optimistic.  Only in the final Rondo does the aggressive tone of Prokofiev's other wartime works raise its martial head.

As soon as the D Major Sonata had been played for the first time-by flutist Nicolai Kharkovsky and pianist Sviatoslav Richter on December 7, 1943 in Moscow-violinists recognized its possibilities for their instrument, and David Oistrakh, the Russian violinist and conductor, suggested to the composer that it would "enjoy a more full-blooded life on the stage" if arranged for violin and piano.  Prokofiev made such a version without delay, and Oistrakh, as well as nearly every other leading violinist in the world, programmed it frequently.

The Hungarian virtuoso Joseph Szigeti played its American premiere in Boston in 1944 from a manuscript smuggled out of the Soviet Union.

- Commentary by Clair W. Van Ausdall