SOMM Redordings announces the first volume of Prokofiev Milestones, featuring three characterful sonatas and a sparkling arrangement of music from Romeo and Juliet performed by violinist Lana Trotovšek and flautist Boris Bizjak accompanied by Maria Canyigueral on piano.

Prokofiev Milestones revealingly turns the focus away from the prolific composer’s famed orchestral works and celebrated ballets to his rich and varied chamber music.

First performed in 1943, the Sonata for Flute and Piano, op.94, is, as Robert Matthew-Walker comments in his notes, “music not of war, but of peace”; a pastoral escape laced with wit and mischief vouchsafed within a pristine neo-classical frame.

It is heard again, transformed, in Prokofiev’s own transcription for violin and piano, op.94a. Composed soon after, it lays claim to being “one of the finest 20th-century works in the genre and a genuine masterpiece”.

The Sonata for Two Violins, op.56, is heard in a new arrangement by Boris Bizjak that eloquently makes much of its sentimentality, drama and vitality.

A characterful suite drawn from Romeo and Juliet, and arranged for violin and piano by Lidia Baich and Matthias Fletzberger, revels in Shakespeare’s great romance and Prokofiev’s ardent response to it.

Maria Canyigueral is making her SOMM Recordings debut. Lana Trotovšek and Boris Bizjak’s previous SOMM release was Hoffmeister’s Magic Flute (SOMMCD0620) with the Piatti Quartet, of which Gramophone approvingly noted: “the challenge falls firmly on the performers… Bizjak, Trotovšek and their accomplices… meet the music’s technical demands admirably”.