ALC 0104 Prokofiev Violin Sonata No 1, Op. 80 - Sonata Op. 94

Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op 80, was written between 1938 and 1946. Prokofiev interrupted his work on it and completed it two years after he had finished his Violin Sonata No. 2. Sonata No. 1 is a large-scale work in four movements that follow the Baroque model of the ‘sonata da chiesa’ (slow-fast-slow-fast). It was dedicated to David Oistrakh, the great Soviet violinist, and it combines extreme virtuosity with a pervasive darkness, a painful broodiness. The first movement (Andante assai) opens with a motive in the lower register of the piano, with folk Russian overtones. The mood is somber, oscillating between ominous and transparent. The fast scales on the violin, against the piano chords, were described by the composer himself as “a wind in a graveyard.”
The second movement (Allegro brusco) contrasts a main motive, stubbornly hammered by the violin and piano, with a secondary theme of a grandiloquent lyricism and with episodes full of virtuosity and burlesque commentaries.