Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky

When Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev visited Hollywood in the late 1930s, his friend and American champion, maestro Leopold Stokowski, was recording The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, to be used in Fantasia. Prokofiev was indelibly impressed by Walt Disney’s work. He saw how the Disney artists made their animation efforts adhere closely to pre-recorded music tracks; he experienced the click track, a device developed by Disney to ensure that sight and sound were closely coordinated. He then returned to Russia to work with Sergei Eisenstein on the epic film Alexander Nevsky.

These are two very fine performances. Ormandy proves himself to be surprisingly exciting in Nevsky, particularly in the first half of The Battle on the Ice. Betty Allen’s voice doesn’t ever seem to have been beautiful, and her registers are uneven, but that small deficit aside, most listeners will find little to complain about. The last movement, with percussion well to the fore, is more cinematic than the actual film, though no one can pretend that these balances are in any way natural.

These are two very fine performances. Ormandy proves himself to be surprisingly exciting in Nevsky, particularly in the first half of The Battle on the Ice. Betty Allen’s voice doesn’t ever seem to have been beautiful, and her registers are uneven, but that small deficit aside, most listeners will find little to complain about. The last movement, with percussion well to the fore, is more cinematic than the actual film, though no one can pretend that these balances are in any way natural.

When Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev visited Hollywood in the late 1930s, his friend and American champion, maestro Leopold Stokowski, was recording The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, to be used in Fantasia. Prokofiev was indelibly impressed by Walt Disney’s work. He saw how the Disney artists made their animation efforts adhere closely to pre-recorded music tracks; he experienced the click track, a device developed by Disney to ensure that sight and sound were closely coordinated. He then returned to Russia to work with Sergei Eisenstein on the epic film Alexander Nevsky.

Forget the movie, Abbado’s Alexander Nevsky is more vivid than anything you’ll see on the screen. With gutsy singing from the London Symphony Chorus, a fine alto solo from Obratsova in “The Field of the Dead,” and terrifying sonorities in The Crusaders in Pskov, this really is the best version available. Abbado pulls out all the stops for the thrilling Battle on the Ice–in the movie the music for this sequence isn’t continuous, and in Temirkanov’s version of the complete file score they resort to battle noises to fill in the gaps just when the action reaches a peak of frenzy.

The famous Russian director Sergei Eisenstein held Prokofiev the film composer in the highest regard, and to couple their two celebrated collaborations, Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky, in a two-disc set is therefore entirely appropriate. Ivan the Terrible, however, is a problematic score. Assembled by Abram Stassevich after the composer’s death, the oratorio lacks the large-scale balances and tensions of Prokofiev’s own Nevsky cantata, relying on narration to hold the structure together. This substantial English version by Michael Lankester, intended to ‘compensate for the lack of visual image’, is well projected by Christopher Plummer. Rostropovich directs a vivid performance of Alexander Nevsky, and only the rich tone of Russian voices is lacking. The LSO plays brilliantly, while the recording does full justice to one of Prokofiev’s finest scores.

Is Prokofiev's Scythian Suite a deliberate parody of Stravinsky's La sacra du printemps? On the basis of Valery Gergiev's recording of it, yes, it is. Gergiev's interpretation is comic and a big, brutal slapstick Stravinsky with bone-crushing percussion and brain-rattling brass, with squealing winds and skittering strings. Gergiev's rhythms in "The Enemy God" and the "Dance of the Black Spirits" have the subtlety of a pie in the face and his colors in "Night and in Procession of the Sun" have the nuance of a pratfall. Gergiev's interpretation is not only the funniest ever recorded, it is also the most accurate representation of the score and the best ever recorded.