Prokofiev and Shostakovich reacted to the anti-formalist purges of 1948 in opposite ways. For Shostakovich it was a question of keeping 'serious' works hidden in a drawer and only going public in the 'safe' areas of film music and patriotic cantatas. Prokofiev on the other hand was able to fall back on the relaxed, wistful vein of the 1943 Flute Sonata without apparent distress, and in its poise and serenity the Cello Sonata of 1949 betrays no signs of stylistic compromise.
Which is not to say that it is in any way shallow or that there is not room for different approaches to its interpretation. For a start there is that interesting epigraph from Gorky on the first page of the manuscript score: ''Man—that has a proud sound''. The classic performance of Rostropovich and Richter (Saga 5305, 11/73—nla) found plenty of undertones in the sonata's prevailing introspection, and Turovsky and Edlina (on Chandos) successfully point up the mild grotesquerie of the scherzo middle movement.
For different reasons neither of the newlyissued performances is as successful as these although both are very well played. Ferschtman and Brautigam are recorded uncomfortably close which may compound the impression that they are somewhat unimaginative as interpreters—the wistfulness and wit of the music largely escape them. Baillie and Lane have the opposite problem in their recording, which is too distant and too generous with ambience to be ideal. This emphasizes the suspicion that the piano playing tends to be too static and lacking in initiative. Baillie's tone is beautifully varied and the hush he achieves in the central part of the finale is a very special experience; but where the piano should converse or goad or oppose, it is too often content merely to accompany. As a result the structure of the long first movement is not properly sustained and the second movement is under-played.
The other works on both new issues are generally more successul. Piers Lane is again very subdued in the Shostakovich Sonata, but the second and fourth movements are conspicuously fine nevertheless, and Turovsky and Edlina err on the side of over-emphasis here (the essential reference recording is obviously the composer's own with Rostropovich on Parlophone PMA1043, 12/58—nla). Ferschtman and Brautigam include Prokofiev's rarely heard Ballade, a substantial student piece which starts in heady late-romantic vein, continues with a dash of diablerie and eventually gets lost in the miasma of its own mysticism.
Which just leaves the make-weight pieces—the Adagio from Cinderella and the Stone flower/Music for Children Waltz (actually the same piece) in which honours are pretty even between the two performances, and the Chout and Ballet Suite transcriptions which are attractive fillers, attractively played.'