Prokofiev Suite

Combined, Prokofiev’s three suites from Romeo include about half of the score. Still, most conductors who want to give us a full CD (or even a full LP) of Romeo pick their own extracts from the complete ballet instead of stringing together the suites. That’s probably at least partly because they don’t share Prokofiev’s preferences when it comes to favorite moments—but it’s also because, as written, the suites are organized for musical rather than narrative coherence, and thus provide little sense of the play’s dramatic trajectory. One way around the second of these issues, of course, is to reorder the suites: that’s, for instance, what Mitropoulos does with selections from the more popular First and Second. Here Andrew Litton pushes that idea to its limit, giving us all 20 movements of the three suites “in the order the music appears in the ballet score.”

Rather than play any single complete suite (of the three) that Prokofiev extracted from the complete ballet, Myung-Whun Chung makes his own selection of numbers, roughly following the plot line and including music representative of all the major characters. Although some other collections offer more music, this hour of Romeo and Juliet makes a satisfying presentation on its own. What makes the performance special is the spectacular playing of the Dutch orchestra. Frankly, it's never been done better. From the whiplash virtuosity of the violins to the bite of the trombones and the firm thud of the bass drum, this is the sound the composer must have dreamed of.

Prokofiev - Leitenant Kije • Scythian Suite / Khachaturian - Gayaneh Suite (Hermann Scherchen)
Classical | EAC | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | Covers | 1CD, 276 MB
Label: Westminster | Catalog Number: 471 265-2 | TT: 62'51''

Scherchen fans of a certain age will fondly recall the Prokofiev in its original incarnation as Westminster LP WL 5091, its murky brown cover depicting a fierce, fleeing horseman pursued by turquoise-colored flying beasties. That cover illustration, this time with the pursuers in red and the background a more legible mustard, will bring on fits of nostalgia, not only for the cover art but for idiomatic performances of wondrous barbarism. The Scythian Suite, salvaged from a ballet score rejected by Diaghilev, is an early work covered with fingerprints of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Indeed, sections such as the opening of the “Night” episode sound like outtakes from that scandalous model. Imitative or not, the young composer produced a score whose relentless drive and brilliant orchestration should be heard more often. Scherchen launches into the opening orchestral splash like a wild man, gives the horn whoops of the final movement the piquant flavor they need, and is deliciously atmospheric in the aforementioned “Night”..

This disc contains two works that have been newly recorded. And they are strange works indeed. During the late 1930s Prokofiev wrote three pieces based on works of Pushkin – incidental music for a production of Pushkin's play, Boris Godunov; incidental music for a stage production of his Eugene Onegin; and music for The Queen of Spades. The latter was never finished and never produced, largely because of a change in attitudes from Stalin's government about what art works should focus on. As for the 1950 oratorio 'On Guard for Peace', the less said the better. This is one of those god-awful patriotic oratorios that Stalin's apparatchiks ordered by the yard from the country's composers. This one extols Stalin and the Soviet state, and recalls the sacrifices of WWII. History notes and lyrics in Russian and English can be found in the booklet.

Sumptuous and tender-hearted, voluptuous and exquisitely beautiful, Theodore Kuchar and the Ukrainian State Symphony Orchestra's 1994 recording of the three suites from Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella could only be improved if there were more of it. And the only way there could be more of it would be if Kuchar and the U.S.S.O. had recorded the whole ballet. But not only are the excerpts extremely well played and supremely persuasively interpreted, they each make sense in context of the suites so that each suite forms a compelling whole rather than a collection of concert hall favorites.