One of Prokofiev's darkest and most brooding works is at the centrepiece of Yulia Chaplina's Second Prokofiev Festival

The pianist Yulia Chaplina is returning to the chamber music of Prokofiev with her 2nd London Prokofiev Festival which runs from 25-28 May 2021. The centrepiece of the festival is a concert Chaplina and violinist Thomas Gould are giving at Kings Place. Entitled Beyond the Iron Curtain (26/5/2021), it features music by three interlinked composers, Prokofiev and his great contemporary Shostakovich and Shostakovich's friend and colleague, Weinberg.  The programme places Prokofiev's powerful Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80, one of his darkest and most brooding pieces dating from 1938 to 1946, alongside music by Weinberg plus Chaplina's own arrangements of music by Shostakovich.

The previous day (25/5/2021), Chaplina is joined by cellist Bartholemew LaFollette at Pushkin House in Bloomsbury for a programme which is centred on Prokofiev's Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 119, written in 1949 for Mstislav Rostropovich at a time when Prokofiev's music was banned and there was no prospect of a performance (Rostropovich in fact premiered it in Moscow in 1950), alongside music by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and the Soviet Armenian composer Arno Babadjainan (1921-1983).

The festival also includes a children's concert, a young artists concert and an amateurs concert.

Full details from Yulia Chaplina's website.