Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas Nos. 4 & 8, Scherzo - Mndoyants: Nocturne

Album review

Pianist Nikita Mndoyants seems to be emerging as a Prokofiev specialist, with a fine recording of the Sarcasms, Op. 17, on an earlier recital and now an album completely dedicated to Prokofiev except for a short composition of Mndoyants' own. The main attraction here is the comparatively rare Piano Sonata No. 4, Op. 29 ("From Old Notebooks"), which Prokofiev wrote during World War I; its gloomy tone is due less to that event than to the suicide of the composer's friend. Sample the first movement, where the pianist is forced to inhabit the instrument's lower reaches. Mndoyants is especially effective here, clarifying the murky lines but not losing their stream-of-consciousness quality; the music has the flavor of spontaneous recollection. In the big and more common Piano Sonata No. 8 in B flat major, Op. 84, Mndoyants holds steady with his contemplative tone. This is a bit unusual in this monumental work, which is conventionally grouped with Prokofiev's War Sonatas even though evidence suggests he began writing it before the Soviet Union entered World War II. Mndoyants remains clear and detailed. He saves the virtuoso display for a transcription, his own, of the second-movement Allegro from the Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, Op. 100. Mndoyants' own little Nocturne is an effective entr'acte, fitting the overall contemplative mood of the album. Aparte contributes a resonant church acoustic from the Église Sainte Pierre in Paris, which normally would be inimical to a composer with the dry precision of Prokofiev, but here, it serves Mndoyants' inward mood fairly well. An important new Prokofiev release.

© James Manheim /TiVo