A long time ago, 23 years to be precise, Peter Donohoe recorded a set of Prokofiev's piano sonatas – numbers six, seven and eight – for EMI.

It was wondered, at the time, if this might be a starter for a recording of all nine of the composer's sonatas for that instrument. It never happened. Now, more than two decades on, Donohoe has finally had, or taken, the opportunity to complete that set. The venture is appearing on the SOMM record label, and the cycle of nine sonatas will appear in two volumes.

Volume One, featuring sonatas one to five, will be released later this month. Volume Two will follow, hard on its heels, in the autumn. Along with the sixth to ninth sonatas, the set will be rounded out with a recording of Prokofiev's Cello Sonata, with Donohoe accompanying cellist Raphael Wallfisch. Any way you turn it, this is a major project. A lot of people have no idea that Prokofiev wrote as many as nine piano sonatas, whose creation ranged across the span of his career and, therefore, several continents and regimes.

And how many of the nine have made it into the piano-recital repertoire in any permanent sense? Very few, in my experience. Sonatas Seven and Eight used to pop up a lot. Occasionally Sonatas Two and Six would be given an outing. If you are lucky enough to hear one of them, the chances are it will be in the context of an international piano competition, where they can provide a student competitor with a dazzling opportunity for display and keyboard characterisation.

I don't pretend to know them all intimately. I went through a hugely addictive Prokofiev phase 30 or 40 years ago, seeking out rare and obscure recordings of what sonatas I could find. I was spellbound and blown away by the music, with all its motoric mania, battering percussiveness, quirky and witty pianisms, richly sonorous slow movements, and frankly staggering levels of virtuosity.

To my mind, the opportunity around the corner to get deep into this music and make personal value judgments on the quality of these sonatas is as welcome as it is overdue. The composer has been dead for 60 years now (Prokofiev died on the same day in 1953 as Joseph Stalin) and this missionary work for the piano sonatas with a pianist who, in many ways, is the ideal man for the job, arguably should have happened, at this level of authority, decades ago.

Which brings us neatly to Peter Donohoe. I have long been a huge fan of Donohoe. We are fortunate in the UK to have, on a wee island in the big world of music, such a clutch of tremendous home-grown pianists across the generations, from John Lill to Paul Lewis to Steven Osborne to Benjamin Grosvenor to Alasdair Beatson to Martin Roscoe to Peter Donohoe and many others.

They're all special. Donohoe is very special. He's a lion of the keyboard, but he's also a poet. From Donohoe you will experience thunder and steel; but you will also experience exquisite lyricism and sensitivity. There's something about his playing that suggests him as the man for this mission. Clearly I'm not alone in thinking this: Donohoe was asked to prepare the definitive edition of Prokofiev's nine piano sonatas for publishers Boosey and Hawkes in 1985. For the forthcoming SOMM recordings of the sonatas, he is providing the liner notes himself. Expect insights galore, I would imagine.

But as well as Donohoe giving us an authoritative insight into this set of largely unknown sonatas, I harbour a faint hope that the recordings might trigger something that will inspire someone to get him back to Scotland. He has been too long away. Time was he was a regular at the BBC SSO where he worked with Andrew Litton and a succession of principal and titled conductors, including Maksymiuk, Brabbins, Volkov and Vanska. But he hasn't worked with the SSO for 13 years. Fashions and tastes change, I know, with managers and music directors; but it's way too long.