Description
Sergei Prokofiev began work on his first violin sonata in 1938, but was only able to complete it in 1946, after the end of the war. He was encouraged to do so by violinist David Oistrakh, who two years earlier had already collaborated on the reworking of Prokofiev’s Flute Sonata op. 94 into a violin sonata. The repressive political situation in the Soviet Union and the harsh years of war left their mark on the very sombre overall character of the Violin Sonata op. 80: Thus, Prokofiev described the ghostly pianissimo runs in the violin in the first movement as the “evening autumn wind that blows over deserted graves”.
The editor of our new Urtext edition is the violinist and musicologist Viktoria Zora, who has researched and written about Prokofiev’s violin sonatas for many years. She has examined all the original sources in Russian and international archives. Thus, for the first time it has been possible to make a source-critical edition of the sonata that eliminates the many errors and ambiguities of earlier editions. The informative preface by Simon Morrison, the world’s leading Prokofiev specialist, sheds light on the genesis and early reception of this expressive work.
