THE KREUTZER SONATA

Simon Prebble must summon all of his formidable talents as a narrator to convey the tangled logic and morbid self-loathing of Pozdnyshev, the main character in Leo Tolstoy’s 1890 novella. A chance encounter with a stranger aboard a train prompts Pozdnyshev to recount the convoluted history of his marriage while revealing much about the nature of marriage among the landed gentry of his time. Prebble succeeds admirably at presenting Pozdnyshev as both an astute social critic and an overprivileged and slightly unhinged egomaniac who misinterprets everything he sees. Is his wife a long suffering victim or a calculating adulteress? Is he the manipulator or the manipulated? Are his actions justified? Prebble’s finely tuned interpretation leaves the answers up to us. L.X. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2012]