These are powerful, intuitive performances from Boris Giltburg playing Prokofiev: War Sonatas, writes Geoffrey Norris.
Boris Giltburg (piano); Orchid Classics ORC 100023, £12.99
The focal sonata of Prokofiev’s wartime triptych is the Seventh, completed in 1942, a year after the Soviet Union entered the conflict. But images of war, its destructive power and the feelings of apprehension and introspection that it can induce are just as graphic in the Sixth Sonata of 1940. The Eighth of 1944, while still of fearsome strength and pungent virtuosity, incorporates more of the lyrical qualities associated with Prokofiev’s epic opera War and Peace.
