Prokofiev Sonata 8 - Free MP3
January 16th, 2008The eight piano Sonata composed by Sergei Prokofiev in B-flat Major is composed of 3 movements:
1. Andante dolce
2. Andante sognante
3. Vivace
It’s the 8th of the 9 piano Sonatas that Sergei Prokofiev wrote. Unfortunately the tenth piano Sonata he was writing was never completed.
This 8th piano Sonata was composed in the period between 1939 and 1944, starting in the same period as Prokofiev’s sixth and seventh piano Sonatas. All three sonatas are signed by the dark years of the war. The 8th Sonata was completed in 1944 and first performed on 30th December that year in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory by the young pianist Emil Gilels.
Although not as popular as the Sixth and Seventh, the Eighth Sonata stands as perhaps the greatest of the cycle. Richter called it “the richest of all of Prokofiev’s sonatas. It has a complex inner life with profound contrapositions.”
Prokofiev made use of themes sketched in 1939, presumably associated with his first meeting with the woman to whom the work is dedicated : Mira Mendelsohn, who became Prokofiev’s second wife years later.
