Following the success of Prokofiev Milestones Vol. 1, SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the release of the second volume of Prokofiev Milestones featuring the Slovenian violinist Lana Trotovsek and Spanish pianist Maria Canyigueral.

For Russian composers born in the last decades of the nineteenth-century, the October Revolution of 1917 was cataclysmic. Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953) was born in Ukraine, known at that time as ‘Little Russia,’ and he sought exile in the United States in 1918. By 1924, he had appeared as soloist in his first three piano concertos in London. But the pull of his homeland remained strong, and in the mid 1930s he decided to return.

The initial works that Prokofiev produced in the Soviet Union—the film score for Lieutenant Kijé, the children’s tale Peter and the Wolf, and the ballet Romeo and Juliet—enjoyed wide public success. It was against this backdrop that Prokofiev began work on his First Violin Sonata, Op. 80, one of his most serious works with a singular depth of expression.