Jim Tobin replies to me:

>>Prokofiev's stock has declined as Shostakovich's has risen.  In
>>recent years, one notes a tendency among writers to patronize him as a
>>shallow, though musical petite maitre, a psychological lightweight.
>
>Stravinsky tended to look down on him too, as I understand.  But
>Prokofiev had a tremendous stylistic range, a distinctive voice, melodic
>and rhythmic inventiveness, and his tonality, if fairly traditional, was
>yet fresh and pungent.  I consider him one of the best composers of the
>last century.

I agree.  I'm at a loss to understand the decline of his reputation.
I also think Shostakovich a great composer, but I don't see the need
to run Prokofiev down in order to praise Shostakovich.  It's almost as
if people can hold in their heads only one modern Russian composer at
a time.

>>The seventh [sonata] - the most widely-played -is the most direct, the
>>most efficient, saying the most in as few notes as possible.  It's also
>>the starkest and most aggressively Modern of the three.  The first
>>movement is as tonally untethered as Prokofiev ever got, but the rhythms
>>are strong to the point of brutality....  [The] last movement [of] the
>>seventh...  though undoubtedly powerful - always smacks to me of agitprop
>>and bravado, possibly because Prokofiev attacks the material so
>>single-mindedly.
>
>Not sure why you want to say that about the finale, Steve.  It's opening
>strikes me as jazzy, not a quality I'd think of as agitprop.

It's the near-relentless insistance on that opening idea, I guess.  I
agree it's jazzy, even exciting.  But it's not psychologically layered,
as the eighth is.

Steve Schwartz