Sergei Prokofiev / Anthony Girard: D’Ombres Et De Lumières – Tatiana Mesniankine

This Da Vinci Classics Album includes two major Sonatas for violin and piano, written in the modern or contemporary period. In dialogue with each other, Sergei Prokofev’s Sonata No. 1 op. 80 and Anthony Girard’s “Behind The Light” Sonata represents the two sides of a coin, with respect to their worldviews. Prokofev sought to express the anguish of war, tyranny, hate, and death, being acutely aware that dark times are constantly on the brink of returning. Girard, instead, was keen to depict the light of hope, which our contemporaries wish to see blazing in their own times. Prokofev’s Sonata, expressing the unheard-of feelings provoked by Stalin’s Great Terror, was conceived as a tribute to the departed, as David Oistrakh poignantly guessed. Its contemplative first movement; its majestic second movement with its heroism and sarcasm; its gentle, calm and expressive third movement; and its spectacular fourth movement, with the concluding scales resembling “the wind passing through a cemetery” are unforgettable. In Girard’s Sonata, the listener is invited to travel and to embark in a journey leading to light.