Steven Copes Plays Prokofiev’s First Violin Sonata at Ordway Concert Hall (05-03-2025)

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert program on Saturday night held a sober reminder that the horrors of the past are unfortunately echoing in the headlines of today.

The first work of the evening was a lament from Ukrainian composer and cellist Zoltan Havrylovych Almashi. It was a piece that Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv invited Almashi to compose by using Samuel Barber’s iconic Adagio for Strings as a reference point.

This request was during the full-scale Russian invasion, and the work “Maria’s City” is dedicated to the city of Mariupol, one of the first cities destroyed by the Russian Forces.

Guest composer and friend of the SPCO Stephen Prutsman read a letter from Almashi, a letter written from a subway station as Russian Forces renewed their bombing campaign against Liev.

The work is poignant and sparse. Even with twenty musicians on stage, there were moments of silence, then solos, as if each musician was a citizen of Liev, waiting in the subway before a moment of sheer panic of screeching string instruments followed by a singular note from a violin slowly diminishing into silence.

Next was Joseph Haydn’s 44th Symphony.

By most accounts, Haydn was a happy person, which wasn’t a common characteristic in most composers during the 18th Century. He is known as the father of the modern symphony, composing 104, his crowning achievement the London Symphonies (93-104).

Haydn’s 44th is unusual due to its minor key, giving the piece, especially the 4th movement an added weight and urgency.

It is alleged that Haydn asked for the slow movement of this symphony to be played at his funeral. There is no record of the request being true, but still a nickname has been attached to it, Trauer, the German word translating to Mourning in English.

After intermission the stage was set for the world premiere of Stephen Prutsman’s arrangement of Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1.

A violin sonata has a violin backed by a piano, but Prutsman created a hybrid concerto, where the piano was replaced by the SPCO. The violinist at the helm was SPCO concertmaster Steven Copes in complete command of the maiden voyage.

Like Almashi, Prokofiev composed his sonata to the backdrop of war and bloodshed, the first two movements composed in 1938 during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, then finishing the work in 1943 during World War II.

Prokofiev’s violin sonata is a modern piece, and Prutsman’s arrangement captures that spirit with strings, winds and brass, and in the back row, one percussionist with an arsenal of instruments ranging from drums, cymbals to a marimba, vibraphone and xylophone, all three echoing the piano from the sonata form.

The piece exemplified Prokovi’s style of being clear, forthright and at times heavy with emotion. Like Almashi’s work, there were moments of silence with individual musicians stepping forward. But the spotlight remained on Copes as he captured the moment with swoons and plucks and during one moment, becoming completely untethered, creating a sound effect of unease, which Prokofiev once described as “… wind passing through a graveyard.”