Alexander Melnikov - Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2 (2019) [CD-Rip]

I seem to have missed hearing volume 1 of this ongoing sonata cycle, which earned much praise. That issue contained sonatas numbers 2, 6 and 8, thus offering two of the three great ‘war sonatas’ and the brilliant and attractive Second Sonata. This new issue is shrewdly planned too, since it pairs the most popular of them all, number 7, with what are probably the two least played of the whole series. If you want to complete that war trilogy of numbers 6,7 and 8, you might need to get to grips with some elusive works as well! Fortunately, Alexander Melnikov is a reliable guide if this terrain is unfamiliar.

The Fourth Sonata opens cryptically – is this unprepossessing piece of figuration low in the keyboard actually the main theme? Melnikov’s manner is subdued, and it takes time to tune into his way with the music, which is to draw us into the subtleties rather than underline them for us. He certainly has a gift for keyboard colour, which this movement needs if its prevailing pastel hues are to have an effect. He makes no apology for the curt closure, with its gruff loud chords. The slow movement, Andante assai, has more charm, and a section marked pp and molto tranquillo offers some welcome lyrical repose, beautifully evoked by Melnikov. The finale’s jollity can seem a little forced, as it flies by in under four minutes. The pianist is well up to its virtuoso challenge of course, but does not disguise a certain desperation in the music. This a persuasive account of a work which does not yield up its secrets easily. Other versions, such as Boris Berman’s on Chandos, make it more accessible perhaps, giving several passages a stronger profile, but it might be that Melnikov is truer to its spirit with his more confiding manner.

The Ninth Sonata is the last the composer completed, and in the words of Simon Johnson in his book The People’s Artist; Prokofiev’s Soviet Years “evolves from fragments, coaxes those fragments into specific forms, and then returns to those fragments. It is not a cohesive work, but a set of sketches.” That second sentence might go too far, but this is another of Prokofiev’s more elusive works. It seeks cohesion in part by the device of anticipating in each movement a theme from the next, ending the finale with a quote from the first movement, thus closing the circle. Melnikov’s buttonholing way with all this is just right, relishing the whimsy in many of these “fragments”, but with a narrative line that leads the ear through the patchwork of motifs. He has a ruminative manner that at times suggests the sort of white note doodling that might have been the origins of this C major sonata. As with the Fourth Sonata, you end up with a stronger sense of the music’s calibre.

The Seventh Sonata is a much less reticent work of course, as its Allegro inquieto opening announces with its jagged theme and harsh dissonances, where Melnikov pulls no punches but does not become too aggressive. The music also benefits from Melnikov’s sensitivity in the Andantino start of the development section, and of course in the lyricism of the ensuing Andante caloroso, where he catches the ambiguity of the warm but lugubrious main theme. As the tempo quickens and the bells toll later in the slow movement, Melnikov’s playing, and his instrument and its recording, are full and rich. The final Precipitato is cleanly played and precipitate enough, and even though Melnikov takes twenty seconds longer than Richter’s 1959 recording (3:52 against 3:32), his cumulative power and momentum compensate somewhat for the lower level of electricity, and least we don’t lose too much detail as we do with Giltburg’s frenetic 3:11 in 2012. With a good booklet (apart from its claim that Prokofiev was born in 1881), and a truthful recording of a well-prepared instrument, this is a fine issue in an important cycle. ~ Roy Westbrook, MusicWeb-International

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