Richard Whitehouse Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953) Sonatas Vol. 2Nos. l, 3 and 4 His sonatas are an important contribution to the repertoire, in addition to his songs and chamber music, film-scores and much else, some works overtly serving the purposes of the Soviet state. In style his music is often astringent in harmony, but with a characteristically Russian turn of melody and, in spite of the expssed opinion of Shostakovich, an idiosyncratic gift for orchestration. Prokofiev completed his Sonata in F minor, Opus 1, in 1909. This was not the first sonata he had written, pceded, as it was, by six earlier works. He used for it material from the second of these, written two years earlier in summer holidays at Sontsovka, a work that he had sent to Myaskovsky as a one-movement sonata that he then described as 'efficient, amusing and ptty'. The Opus 1 sonata was published, after revision, in 1911. It opens with a strongly rhythmic chordal pattern, set against the triple-metre qu...