Prokofiev’s Large-Scale Violin Works

While most of Prokofiev’s symphonies, piano concertos and sonatas and, certainly, operas have been relegated to near-oblivion, his four large-scale violin works are being programmed with unprecedented frequency in concert--as recordings of them continue to sprout.

Dmitry Sitkovetsky (on Virgin 90734) explores every cranny of both violin concertos, particularly the deeper, more challenging First Concerto, exposing in the process a subtlety and variety of rhythm and mood that other interpreters tend to overlook. There is, quite simply, more music--dark music--potentially to appreciate here.

The qualifier, potentially, is, however, a major one, for the Sitkovetsky tone, recorded with relentless presence, grates, and his technique is sufficiently labored to offset much of what is gained through his probing intelligence. With fewer subtleties to plumb, Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony provide routine accompaniment.

The alluring sound and polished technique lacking in Sitkovetsky’s readings are amply evidenced by Anne-Sophie Mutter in the First Concerto (Erato 75506), and she doesn’t take the pretty way out either. Her interpretation is biting and driven to a fault: the finale needn’t sound so fierce as she makes it, nor as densely textured and explosive as it emerges in Mstislav Rostropovich’s conducting of the National Symphony. Not a dull moment here, however.

There is a certain ironic logic in Erato’s coupling of Prokofiev with the Tchaikovskyish Concerto of Alexander Glazunov, what with the older man having been director of the Petersburg Conservatory while the young Prokofiev, one of its most unruly students, was attempting to trash that bastion of convervatism. But Mutter’s Glazunov, while technically stunning, substitutes steel for the requisite charm.

To hear this amiable relic done justice, try it as played--with the grand gesture, and lushness of tone to match--by the veteran American violinist Oscar Shumsky, handsomely seconded by Neeme Jarvi and the Scottish National Orchestra on a new Chandos CD (8596) that also includes the same composer’s succulent ballet score “The Seasons.”

The two radically dissimilar Prokofiev violin sonatas arrive this month in two vividly contrasted pairs of performances.

Shlomo Mintz and Yefim Bronfman (on Deutsche Grammophon 423 575) deliver a chillingly intense account of the earlier Sonata in F minor, gritted-teeth, suppressed-rage music that has not as yet found its public. In the genial, familiar Second Sonata the duo savors a relatively gentle mood, although theirs is still a more taut and nervy approach to the score than is usually encountered--and no less pleasing for it.

The even younger team of violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and pianist Alexander Lonquich (on EMI/Angel 49787) is less highly strung, and more closely and warmly recorded, as befits their interpretation. Where Mintz is all dash and drive, Zimmermann, with his wider and more insistent vibrato, tends to pull his punches in the First Sonata and to deliver the Second in broader phrases.

Both teams are flawlessly integrated and if DG’s scores higher on the thrill meter, EMI/Angel’s, by also including Prokofiev’s early, substantial “Cinq melodies” and the Heifetz transcription of the “Love for Three Oranges” March, is the better value.

It’s hardly surprising that the Prokofiev score for Eisenstein’s epic film “Ivan the Terrible” (1942-46) has received little attention relative to that accorded his music for the same director’s earlier “Alexander Nevsky.” After all, the composer furthered his own cause by creating a concert cantata out of “Nevsky” while leaving “Ivan” a series of background fragments at his death in 1953.

Enter conductor Abram Stasevich to create an “Ivan the Terrible” oratorio, complete with connective narrative, and a ferociously dramatic, exciting concert work which has attracted at least one big-name conductor in the West, Riccardo Muti, whose terrific 1978 recording with soloists, the Ambrosian Singers and the Philharmonia Orchestra returns on a mid-priced EMI/Angel Studio CD (59584).

Curiously, you get excerpts from the actual film score, rather than the oratorio, in an equally gripping performance by the U.S.S.R. Symphony and Chorus under Stasevich himself (Le Chant du Monde 278.390). But there’s some 20 minutes less music--about half of it first-rate--in this full-priced release than from Muti, and one does miss the emoting narrator.

The two large scale works for cello that Prokofiev wrote during his last years, the Sonata in C and the Sinfonia Concertante, grew out of his friendship with Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave premiere performances to both. The Sonata has become a staple of the cello-piano repertory, falling gracefully on the ear while giving its performers a good workout.

The young, highly hyped Israeli cellist Ofra Harnoy and pianist Michael Dussek (RCA 7845) dispose of its notes with ease, but without the geniality and blooming tone brought to it by its dedicatees, Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter, whose 30-year-old Russian recording merits revival. Or, better yet, a reunion of these artists for a glasnost-era re-recording.

Rostropovich has recorded the Sinfonia Concertante anew and superbly, with Seiji Ozawa and the London Symphony (Erato 75485). But the work itself remains, to these ears, pale and aloof. Erato’s coupling, however, is Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, also written for Rostropovich, who, with Ozawa’s sympathetic partnership, once again invests this dazzling score with his patented hefty tone, grumbly humor and a degree of authority that no other cellist can quite match.