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Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas: A Guide for the Listener and the Performer.

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Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas: A Guide for the Listener and the Performer. By Boris Berman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. [xiii, 240 p. ISBN-13: 9780300114904. $35.| Illustrations, music examples, bibliographic references, indexes.

As appealing to the casual listener as they are rewarding to the serious performer, the nine piano sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev offer material aplenty for a book-length study. In them, one encounters thrilling feats of virtuosity side-by-side with passages of earnest simplicity, heartfelt lyricism combined with intense rhythmic vitality and formal inventiveness, and the composer's trademark stylistic wit put to effective use within the context of serious concert music. In chronological and stylistic terms they represent the entire scope of Prokofiev's compositional career. With the possible exception of the First Sonata, about which even the composer spoke in apologetic terms (see pp. 48-50), these pieces constantly engage. Any student of music who undertakes an investigation into their world will find a reliable source of pleasure, interest, and inspiration for a lifetime. Any single book, especially a relative short one like this, can only scratch the surface of their creative depths.

A professor of piano at Yale University, Boris Berman possesses many of the essential qualities one would want from a guide into Prokofiev's musical world. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Lev Oborin, who won first prize at the 1927 Chopin Competition in Warsaw (beating out his close friend Dmitri Shostakovich) and premiered both of Prokofiev's Sonatas for Violin and Piano...

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