Cinderella 2000

Mostly instrumentals - this tape sounds like it was Cozy Powell's work/practice tape for the sessions he was involved in for Cinderella's 'Long Cold Winter' album…

A live Cinderella album entitled 'Stripped', a solid collection of live tracks from Philadelphia based group, was released on May 16th through Collectors Dream Records. Originally released in 2001 as 'Live At The Key Club', the songs contained on 'Stripped' were recorded over the course of two nights at the Key Club, in Hollywood, during Cinderella's 'Unfished Business' tour. The shows were staged on October 2nd and 3rd of 1998 and featured the original Cinderella line-up, with main man Tom Keifer out front, commanding with his tortured vocals, along with Jeff LaBar, Fred Coury and Eric Brittingham. 'Stripped' includes fourteen hard rockin' and blues-based tracks from the group's recording career and two bonus tracks recorded live in 1991.

Prokofiev arranged excerpts from his ballet Cinderella for solo piano as three separate suites: the Three Pieces Op. 95, Ten Pieces Op. 97, and Six Pieces Op. 102. Here Olli Mustonen fashions his own extended suite that starts with Op. 95 intact, continues with Op. 97 reordered minus one piece, and concludes with three of the Op. 102 selections. In the main, Mustonen’s amazingly worked-out pianism toes the fine line between brilliant individuality and irritating self-absorption. In Op. 97, for instance, the pianist brings remarkable crispness and élan to the frolicking triplet figurations throughout Fairy Spring and the Grasshoppers and Dragon Flies, and rubs our noses in the Autumn Fairy’s dissonant accents. At times, however, interpretive tics transform the music’s rhythmic profile and thematic resourcefulness into mannered mush. The Op. 95 Pavane is a case in point.

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These are excellent performances of exceptionally interesting repertoire. Prokofiev himself arranged 19 numbers from his Cinderella ballet for solo piano, so he surely would not have objected in principle to their reworking for two pianos; nor in practice, I suspect, because Pletnev’s arrangements are fabulously idiomatic and the playing here has all the requisite sparkle and drive. Shostakovich’s Op 6 Suite is far too seldom heard. True, it is an apprentice piece and open to criticism – both the first two movements peter out rather unconvincingly and the blend of grandiosity à la Rachmaninov and academic dissection of material à la Taneyev is not always a happy or very original one. But as a learning experience the Suite was a vital springboard for the First Symphony a couple of years later and there is real depth of feeling in the slow movement, as well as intimations elsewhere of the obsessive drive of the mature Shostakovich. What a phenomenally talented 16-year-old he was!

On 1977's A Farewell to Kings it quickly becomes apparent that Rush had improved their songwriting and strengthened their focus and musical approach. Synthesizers also mark their first prominent appearance on a Rush album, a direction the band would continue to pursue on future releases…