Prokofiev, Mndoyants

Description

Pianist Nikita Mndoyants dedicates this recording to Prokofiev, whose music has accompanied him since his beginnings. Here he brings together the Fourth Sonata “after old notebooks” and the Eighth, an integral part of the so-called “war sonatas,” as well as an arrangement of the scherzo from the Fifth Symphony. Nikita Mndoyants thus offers an appreciation of the composer’s different facets, and a way to measure the richness of a language in which exceptional virtuosity, a sense of enchantment, and biting irony are intertwined. As a counterpoint, Nikita Mndoyants records a nocturne for piano of his own, extending the Russian tradition of pianist-composers and following in the footsteps of Russia’s “enfant terrible.”