Anticipating the Prokofiev Centenary

Pity poor Prokofiev. His name may be familiar to all music lovers, but only a few of his compositions are. His acceptance average, the ratio of popular works to quantity produced, remains terrible. The hits would include both of his violin concertos, along with “Peter and the Wolf,” “Lieutenant Kije,” possibly “Alexander Nevsky.”

But only two of his seven symphonies are repertory pieces; one each of his five piano concertos and nine piano sonatas; one, at best two, of seven ballet scores; none, really, of his eight published operas.

Other composers--as disparate as Bartok and Handel--have seen their stock rise dramatically during a celebratory year and remain high thereafter.

“Lucky Prokofiev,” you might then think, since 1991 will mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. But who will notice amid the Mozart madness? Prokofiev is certain to be eclipsed, just as he was when he died--on the same day, March 5, 1953, and in the same city (Moscow) as another famous Soviet citizen: Joseph Stalin.

Certainly Prokofiev will get his share of attention in 1991. A real digging into his output will, however, be left to the recording industry, which is already at work anticipating the centenary.

The composer’s piano music is particularly well represented among the new recordings, with three integral sets of his nine completed solo sonatas recently released. None comes from what we could call a “name” pianist or a big label.

The performing style we associate with Prokofiev’s piano music--tough, driving, demanding pistons in place of fingers--is clearly anathema to young Murray McLachlan (Olympia 255, 256, 257, three separate CDs). The Scottish pianist takes a perversely contrarian approach, even in such exercises in piano-battering as the brief Third Sonata (1917) and the mature Seventh (1942), downplaying the scores’ intentional crudities to the point of eradicating the composer’s personality.

McLachlan is true to the introspective character of the undervalued Eighth and Ninth sonatas, but he remains a neutral, uninspiring interpreter, addicted to

slow tempos.

To a young Finn named Matti Raekallio there is likewise only one Prokofiev: Sergei the Barbarian. The iron-fingered Raekallio accordingly slams the living daylights out of most of the music. To him, lyric movements serve only as interludes between bouts of pianistic fisticuffs. True, the pianist’s hands are powerful and accurate. But then, on recordings whose aren’t? (Note: Only two of the three volumes were available for review: Ondine 716, with Sonatas 1-3 and the “Visions fugitives” and Ondine 729, devoted to Nos. 7-9.)

The American pianist Barbara Nissman, on the other hand, has the measure of this music, all of it. There are several Prokofievs on display during the four-plus decades it took to create this collection and Nissman finds the mood, the dynamic scale, the touch suitable to each period and each individual work.

In the nine sonatas and various shorter works--all three pianists offer the splendidly quirky “Visions fugitives”--Nissman shows that she has the dexterity, the power and the fantasy to expose this very worthwhile body of music in all its strength and lyricism (Newport Classic 60092, 60093, 60094, three individual CDs).

British pianist Moura Lympany (b. 1916), a frequent visitor to this country after World War II, made some fine Prokofiev recordings for EMI during the 1950s; two of these, both with Walter Susskind conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, have been re-released: the dashing First Concerto, the composer’s scandalous St. Petersburg Conservatory graduation exercise (with Rachmaninoff Concertos 1 & 2 on Olympia 190), and his most popular work in the form, that ultimate test of pianistic athleticism, the Third Concerto (with Rachmaninoff No. 3 on Olympia 191).

Lympany, like Nissman, projects the hard-edged modernism of the scores without denying their 19th-Century roots. Her readings are both bracingly rhythmical and broadly lyrical. In short, she knows her Prokofiev.

And don’t miss the latest recorded recital by violinist Victoria Mullova, expertly partnered by pianist Bruno Canino, in a program that includes Prokofiev’s gloriously lush Sonata in D, Ravel’s jazzy Violin Sonata, and Stravinsky’s elegant Divertimento on themes from his ballet “The Fairy’s Kiss” (Philips 426 254).

The combination of dramatic fire and refinement of tone that Mullova brings to everything she does makes her playing one of the pleasures of contemporary concert-going--and record listening.

Suites from a pair of the composer’s lesser known ballets, the rollicking, black-humorous “Chout,” performed by the Diaghilev company in 1921, and the tough, machine-age “Pas d’acier” written for Massine six years later, comprise a handsome program along with a delightful six-movement suite from “The Love for Three Oranges” in vigorous, handsomely executed and sumptuously recorded readings by the Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Jarvi (Chandos 8729).