Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 56

Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953)

Sergei Prokofiev was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor. 

Prokofiev composed his first work at five, called “Indian Gallop.” Already dismissing common tonality, it was written in F Lydian mode because of Prokofiev’s “reluctance to tackle the black notes.” At seven he learned chess, another life-long passion, beating a world chess champion later in life in an exhibition match. At nine, he composed his first opera, and at eleven, the director of the Moscow Conservatory arranged for the composer and pianist Reinhold Gliére to teach Prokofiev privately. While Prokofiev admitted that these lessons had merit, he was frustrated with the Gliére’s traditional modulations and phrase structure, and felt he struggled afterwards to free himself from these conventions.

Despite his parents' attempts to enroll him in high school, the composer Alexander Glazunov discovered the young Prokofiev’s music and encouraged him to apply instead to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where Glazunov was a professor. Prokofiev’s compositional skill was not the only ability recognized at the school. Before leaving the Conservatory in 1914, Prokofiev won a piano competition called the “battle of the pianos,” awarding him the top prize of a Schroeder grand piano. He won by playing his own 1st Piano Concerto.

Prokofiev’s piano abilities often got him through financial hardships, and undoubtedly informed his highly virtuosic compositional styles. However, Prokofiev felt composition was more important than his solo career, and expressed irritation that performance robbed him of time to compose. After emigrating to the US with hopes of more opportunity, his initial success as a piano soloist was undone by all the time he spent working on his opera, The Love for Three Oranges. The premiere of the opera was delayed, resulting in a loss of income so catastrophic that Prokofiev decided to move to Paris. By the 1930s, however, the Great Depression in the US and Europe put an end to new commissions for operas and ballets. Choosing not to live as a soloist, Prokofiev returned to Russia. 

The next two decades involved a lot of Soviet interference with his work, much of which he complied with. Many works went through serious revision due to governmental requests, but by 1948 the Politburo denounced him, along with other composers such as Shostakovich, Popov, and Khachaturian. Many of his works were banned, and many more were no longer performed out of fear of governmental disapproval. Prokofiev afterwards attempted to write a Soviet-friendly opera The Story of the Real Man, but it was cancelled. Prokofiev died on the same day as Lenin, near Red Square.

The Sonata for Two Violins was written in 1932, right before Prokofiev’s return to Moscow. Despite not being a violinist himself, the piece is extraordinarily virtuosic. It utilizes the extreme registers of the violin, often simultaneously, layering complex chords in every part of the instrument, and incorporates syncopated rhythms that would be far easier on one instrument, but must be passed back and forth seamlessly between two. There are extended stretches that require the fastest possible playing of non-intuitive patterns simply to create an atmosphere under the melody, and then passages where the difficulty is in the stark simplicity. 

Despite being a masterpiece of the genre, the piece was the only two-violin work Prokofiev produced. In his autobiography, Prokofiev wrote: “listening to bad music inspires good ideas […] After once hearing an unsuccessful piece for two violins without accompaniment, it struck me that in spite of the apparent limitations of such a duet one could make it interesting enough to listen to for ten or fifteen minutes.” So, we will try to limit our performance to under fifteen minutes.