Prokofiev War Sonatas

[danny_i]

Hi all, I'm thinking of eventually working on Prokofiev's sonatas 6,7,8, commonly referred to as the war sonatas.

Before doing so, I would like to do some serious research on the background and motivation for these works, as well as Prokofiev's life in general, particularly his political/social views, hopefully to discover some specific aspects of 1939-1944 Russian politics influenced these sonatas.

This will be a long project, but I would like to get started. Hopefully you all have some suggestions of essays/books or online references that could get me started. Interviews/masterclasses that delve into the motivation behind these compositions would be great too.

[andreslr6]

A good point of reference is a book by Boris Berman, Prokofiev's Sonatas Guide to listener and performer. It comes with a short biography of Prokofiev, as well as a short chapter about Prokofiev's style of playing. Then it jumps to the Sonatas, each of them is explained in three parts, first with a brief historical reference and info, then comes "listening closely" where he explains his musical points of view and then the "master class" which is where he gives his written suggestions and interpretation. It's all good, in reality I would've like something more like an essay in the way as GG's writings, but it's ok as a student and not to be taken as a strict point of view but rather as "another" point of view which is completely valid and very solid, he (BB) has recorded all of Prokofiev's piano works after all .

Regarding Prokofiev's biography, I have one published by Phaidon in a series of 20th century composers, written by Daniel Jaffe (I haven't finished it though). Then, there's the popular one by Harlow Robinson. And also the diaries by Prokofiev himself, but I have no idea of what do they contain.

It's nice that you want to start this project, there's been also a lot of writing done by various pianists. I did an essay and analysis of the 7th for my last semester of musical analysis, and when looking for sources I found a thesis by a Colombian pianist about the 3 of them, it's a harmonic analysis as well, but it's all written in Spanish, I can give you the link if you want too and if you know Spanish . It's been 2 years and a half since I started learning the 7th for the first time, and believe me, every time I return to study it I find out new things, lots of subtleties. I can help you with the 7th if you want , the 1st and 2nd movemnts are filled with subtleties and it's my favorite Sonata by Prokofiev.

[danny_i]

Thanks a lot for the info Andre! I will look up Berman's book, I am a big fan of his interpretations, especially Prokofiev 8 and 9.

I can't read spanish, but do you think it would be possible for me to read your essay and analysis of the 7th? I hope to work on that sonata in the future.

Again, thanks for the information.