Prokofiev

Music from Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Eugene Onegin,

The Queen of Spades, War and Peace; Pushkin Waltz in C sharp minor (arr. Babayan) Martha Argerich,

Sergei Babayan (piano) Deutsche Grammophon 479 9854 60:12 mins

This surprising compendium highlights Prokofiev’s work on top-notch Shakespeare and Pushkin projects in the mid-1930s, with a nod forwards to his Tolstoy opera War and Peace and a Pushkin Waltz modelled on Chopin’s C sharp minor Prelude. Equally surprisingly, Sergei Babayan’s transcriptions for two pianos don’t include the themes which will be familiar to any pianist who knows Prokofiev’s Eighth Piano Sonata – the Minuet from Tatyana’s name-day party in Eugene Onegin which became the second movement of that sonata, and the meeting of Hermann and Lisa in The Queen of Spades intensifying the poignancy of the