RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR
August
‘There is a real sense that Ibragimova and Osborne’s responses come from deep within the music’s substance’
Geoffrey Norris is thrilled and chilled by a new recording of Prokofiev’s violin sonatas
Prokofiev Violin Sonatas – No 1, Op 80; No 2, Op 94bis. Five Melodies, Op 35bis Alina Ibragimova vn Steven Osborne pf Hyperion F CDA67514 (61’ • DDD)
Writing in 1954, David Oistrakh, who was close to Prokofiev during the gestation of both the violin sonatas, made an interesting comment about the performer’s responsibilities in playing his music. ‘It is music,’ he said, ‘in which nothing can be omitted, not a single turn of the melody, not a single modulation. It requires the strictest attention to every detail of expression, a fine, but not over-refined, execution of each individual intonation, as in the case of wellenunciated singing.’ To judge from this absorbing disc of the two sonatas and the Five Melodies, Op 35bis, Alina Ibragimova and Steven Osborne have embraced the very essence of Oistrakh’s remarks. There is a real sense that their responses come from deep within the music’s substance. Just as Oistrakh also advised that ‘the best performance of Prokofiev’s music, or of any other good music for that matter, is one in which the personality of the performer does not obtrude in any way’, so it is the personality and voice of Prokofiev that shine through in Ibragimova and Osborne’s playing, with the traits that lend both sonatas their individuality of expression securely enshrined, defined and projected.
The Second Sonata, the one that Prokofiev reworked from his D major Flute Sonata at Oistrakh’s behest, has generally had the more welcoming reception. However, the First, begun in 1938 but put aside until 1946 and interrupted by work on other major projects including Alexander Nevsky, Cinderella and the opera Semyon Kotko, is by far the more thoughtprovoking. Why is it so dark, so disturbing, so shot through with anxiety, when the D major Sonata is, by comparison, bathed in sunlight? Whether or not this was an allusion to the dead of the Second World War or to those who had disappeared during the Stalinist purges, the sense of desolation and disquiet is something that comes across powerfully in Ibragimova and Osborne’s performance. From the very start, they prepare the ear for a shrouded atmosphere: Osborne’s deeptoned octaves in the bottom register of the piano establish an enveloping aura of the sepulchral, with Ibragimova’s wisps and gasps of bleached violin timbre adding to the sense of foreboding. Later on in the movement there is a passage that Oistrakh singled out for special mention in his 1954 tribute to Prokofiev. The piano has sequences of ethereal chords in the upper register while the violin is scurrying up and down the fingerboard in gusty shadows. Prokofiev, according to Oistrakh, likened this effect to ‘the wind in a graveyard’, and, Oistrakh added, ‘after remarks of this kind the whole spirit of the sonata assumed a deeper significance for us’. With Ibragimova and Osborne you can appreciate just what Prokofiev meant. Quite why he meant it to be like that we can only surmise; but with Ibragimova and Osborne, this wind in a graveyard sends an apt, icy shiver of apprehension down the spine. When Oistrakh spoke of ‘a fine, but not over-refined, execution of each individual intonation’ in the performance of Prokofiev’s music, he was not referring to the necessity for correct tuning (though that in itself is an obvious advantage) but to the Russian concept of intonatsiya that is deemed to lie at the heart of the creative process and, by extension, of musical performance. It is a difficult term to define succinctly, as
20 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2014
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