Violin Sonata No.1 in F minor, Op.80

Because it was completed shortly after the end of the Second World War, it is all too easy to assume that the Violin Sonata in F minor is Prokofiev’s reaction to that devastating event. In fact, it was started before the war began – not in anticipation of the coming conflict but after hearing a performance of Handel’s Violin Sonata in D. If it sounds more bellicose than baroque it is probably because much of it, including the aggressive Allegro brusco, was written when Prokofiev was also working on the score for Sergei’s Eisenstein’s fiercely patriotic Alexander Nevsky film in the summer of 1938.

What moved Prokofiev to complete the Sonata when the war was over    must have been his friendship with David Oistrakh. Certainly, it is to Oistrakh that the Sonata is dedicated and it was he who gave the first performance with the pianist Lev Oborin in Moscow in 1946. “Nothing written for the violin in many decades,” Oistrakh declared, “could equal the piece in beauty and depth.” Prokofiev’s own, more modest description of the work refers to the first movement as an “introduction to the second.” In fact, although the chaconne-style opening theme recurs several times, the movement is not complete in itself, some of its material remaining to be fully integrated only later.

While the Allegro brusco shares something of the percussive brutality of the Battle on the Ice in Alexander Nevsky, it does have as second subject a compensatingly broad legato melody for the violin in heroic mode. This is the first substantial intimation of a lyrical element which becomes more important as the work proceeds. The F major Andante has little room for anything else and while the Allegrissimo seems bent at first on causing rhythmic mischief, it too has its lyrical repose – in the serenely uncomplicated middle section and finally, against all apparent odds, in a brief but reassuring allusion to the opening theme of the work.

Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata in F minor has so much in common with its near contemporaries among the piano sonatas – the war-torn Sixth, Seventh and Eighth – that it is tempting to associate it with the same unhappy source of inspiration. In fact, although it was completed in 1946, it was started a year before the war began and not in anticipation of the coming conflict but after hearing a performance of Handel’s Violin Sonata in D. If the Sonata in F minor sounds more bellicose than baroque it is probably because Prokofiev was also working in the summer of 1938 on the score for Sergei’s Eisenstein’s fiercely patriotic Alexander Nevsky film. Of course, the intervening experience of modern warfare must have had its effect on the work when he returned to it in 1946 but the fact is that much of the material of the first three movements, including the aggressive Allegro brusco, dates from 1938.

What renewed the composer’s interest in the Sonata must have been his friendship with David Oistrakh, on whose suggestion and with whose assistance he had rescored the Flute Sonata in D as the Violin Sonata No.2 in 1944 (the title of Violin Sonata No.1 had been allocated to the F minor work in 1938). Certainly, it is to David Oistrakh that the F minor Violin Sonata is dedicated and it was he who gave the first performance with the pianist Lev Oborin in Moscow in 1946. “Nothing written for the violin in many decades,” Oistrakh declared, “could equal the piece in beauty and depth.”

Prokofiev’s own, more modest description of the work refers to the first movement as an “introduction to the second.” In fact, although the chaconne-style opening theme – introduced by the piano in low octaves and distinguished by its falling fifths – recurs several times, the movement is not complete in itself. The muted scale passage which makes such an icy entry towards the end, the violin blowing round the piano harmonies “like the wind in a graveyard”, are integrated only later. The little pizzicato figure associated with them is a discreet anticipation of a phrase in the main theme of the Allegro brusco.

The second movement shares something of the percussive brutality of the Battle on the Ice in Alexander Nevsky. But it does have as second subject a compensatingly broad legato melody for the violin in heroic mode. This is the first substantial intimation of a lyrical element which becomes more important as the work proceeds. The F major Andante has little room for anything else, least of all in the slender textures of the outer sections where the violin draws a sustained melodic line round a gently rippling figuration in the right hand of the piano part. The Allegrissimo seems bent at first on causing rhythmic mischief, its impetuous main theme plunging into three different metres in every four bars. But it too has its lyrical repose – in the serenely uncomplicated Poco più tranquillo middle section in C major and finally, against all apparent odds and only after a recall of the icy wind in F minor, in a brief but reassuring allusion in F major to the opening theme of the work.

Gerald Larner ©2006