Alexandra Silocea (piano) Avie AV2183***

The piano was Prokofiev's own instrument, and the first sonata included here was his official Op 1. It was in fact a recasting of a piece that was not by any means his first attempt, and he would habitually go on to refashion earlier music. His Fourth Sonata was actually given the title From Old Notebooks, and he reworked the Fifth, written in 1923, in the year of his death, 1953. There's a sense in which these five sonatas show Prokofiev before he got fully into his stride.

There’s nothing that quite matches the vigour of the three that would follow in the wartime 1940s, though the whirling writing of the Third has long found favour with pianists, and the Second and the Fourth have been gaining in popularity. Romanian pianist Alexandra Silocea takes a clean-limbed, sober view of the music, missing the off-centredness that can make it so fascinating. See url.ie/55bd