In this first volume of a complete cycle of the Prokofiev sonatas, his compatriot Alexander Melnikov reveals three emblematic works. The brilliant Second Sonata dates from 1912, when its composer was still a student at the St Petersburg Conservatory; with the Sixth (1939) and Eighth (1944) we meet the master in his full maturity, plunged in the darkest years of the Great Terror and the war. Echoes of his music for the theatre, lyricism and violence mingle amid ultra-virtuoso pianism.
