Prokofiev:
Egyptian Nights
Hamlet
Autumnal
Sketch
Zdravitsa ("Hail to Stalin")
Flourish, Mighty
Land
Russian State Symphonic Capella
Russian State Symphony
Orchestra
Valeri Polyanski (conductor)
Chandos
Prokofiev: The Stone Flower
BBC Philharmonic
Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)
Chandos
Prokofiev:
Alexander Nevsky
Scythian
Suite
Olga Borodina (mezzo-soprano)
Kirov Orchestra and Chorus
of the Mariinsky Theater
Valery Gergiev (conductor)
Philips
Prokofiev:
Symphony No. 1 ("Classical")
Romeo and Juliet Suite
No. 2
Suite from The Love for Three Oranges
St. Petersburg
Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov (conductor)
RCA Red Seal
In the West, at least until fairly recently, the prevailing opinion about
Prokofiev's decision to return to Russia in 1936 was that it was the biggest
mistake he ever made. By most Western accounts, Prokofiev would have become a
greater composer if he had not been forced so frequently to subordinate his
creative impulses to political expediency. The dogma of "socialist realism,"
strictly (and often bloodily) enforced throughout the Stalin era, decreed that
artists must fulfill their social and revolutionary obligations by creating work
that provided positive role models and looked forward optimistically to a
shining socialist future. And Prokofiev submitted to that dogma (how willingly,
we may never know for certain), producing many a work whose political content
may embarrass us nowadays.
Yet some of those Prokofiev works which were regarded in the Soviet empire as models of socialist realism are the same pieces that have enjoyed repertory status in the West — Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Alexander Nevsky and the Fifth Symphony. Conversely, early masterpieces written when Prokofiev lived in the West (such as the Second Symphony and The Fiery Angel), and late works that encountered official Soviet hostility (such as the Sixth Symphony and the Ninth Piano Sonata) have never achieved popularity in either the West or Russia.
The 2003 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Prokofiev's death has resulted in a slew of new CDs which make it possible for listeners to reevaluate the composer, in unfamiliar works as well as familiar ones.
Prokofiev's final ballet score, The Legend of the Stone Flower, has
never been popular anywhere: while there are 16 recorded performances currently
available of Romeo and Juliet and eight of Cinderella, there is
only one of Stone Flower — this new version by Gianandrea Noseda
and the BBC Philharmonic on Chandos.
This work is usually regarded as bottom-drawer Prokofiev, evidence of the composer's declining creative powers. Harlow Robinson, in his biography of the composer, speaks for most Prokofievans: "The relentless forward drive of Romeo and Juliet is not to be found here. The Stone Flower is placidly romantic, slow-moving and literal." That's certainly the impression created by Noseda's performance, which is difficult to sit through. (Frankly, I couldn't listen to it for more than 30 minutes at a stretch.) That Sviatoslav Richter could call music that sounds like this a "miracle" and pronounce it the equal of Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella seems strange indeed. (A long-out-of-print 1968 recording by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, with dancing tempos, garish tone colors and a solid narrative sense, helps explain Richter's sentiments.)
On another, more exciting Chandos release, Valeri Polyanski conducts the Russian State Symphony and Symphonic Cappella in several other rarely-performed works. Prokofiev was just as interested in working for the theater as for the screen, and two works on this disc are suites the composer arranged from incidental music he composed for productions of Alexander Tairov's Egyptian Nights and Shakespeare's Hamlet. Polyanski and his band perform them well, but the music, while often intriguing, never achieves the quality of Prokofiev's film scores.
Of considerably more interest are the cantatas Zdravitsa and Flourish, Mighty Land, which are exactly the sort of government-commissioned, explicitly political works that Soviet composers were required to write. We may imagine that Prokofiev was miserable when he composed such pieces, but the works themselves — these two, at any rate — suggest otherwise.
In Flourish, Mighty Land, an eight-minute work for mixed chorus and
orchestra written in 1947 for the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution,
the composer actually seems to be having fun. The opening march, with its snare
drum and muted but aggressively out-of-tune trumpet, seems to have walked in
from The Love for Three Oranges, and Prokofiev's confident use of the
chorus is masterful. Especially dazzling is the display created midway in the
piece by the contrast between the pulsing repeated notes of the women and the
solemn, march-like intonations of the men. Polyanski conducts this witty,
light-as-air music superbly.
But not even Flourish, Mighty Land prepares a listener for the astonishing 13-minute-long Zdravitsa. The literal meaning of the title is a toast addressed to someone on a ceremonial occasion. Here, that someone was Josef Stalin, for whose 60th birthday in 1939 Zdravitsa was composed as a present. It's the kind of work that, back in the days of the Cold War, might have been cited when arguing that Russian artists led lives of misery under Communist rule. Such an assumption seems natural when considering that Prokofiev had to set such lines as these:
My life has now blossomed like the cherry tree in the spring,
Oh, the sun shines, it plays among the bright drops of dew!
Stalin brought us this brightness, warmth and sun.
You will know, my beautiful son, that his warmth comes to you
over forests, over mountains.
Yet these words are set to a yearning Mussorgskian melody, one of the most beautiful Prokofiev ever wrote and one that returns repeatedly. As in Flourish, Mighty Nation, Prokofiev uses the contrasts between male and female voices to great effect: a martial theme sets the stage for the entrance of the men, accompanied by brass and snare drum; then the women enter, accompanied by piercing trumpets. The male and female voices float in and out effortlessly, ultimately joining each other for a finale in which they race up and down scales until the glorious burst of joy in the coda. The text may celebrate a monster, but Prokofiev has produced the kind of joyous writing for chorus and orchestra found in Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Despite the near-impossibility of accepting its premise, Zdravitsa deserves to be heard. Polyanski's fine performance is the only one available.
Of Alexander Nevsky, on the other hand, more than 50 recordings are
still in print. Very few are as fine as the Philips disc with Valery Gergiev
leading his Kirov Orchestra and Chorus, recorded live at the opening concert of
the first Moscow Easter Festival in May 2002. This is a Russian-to-the-roots
performance: the bitter chill of the country's winter can be heard in the
orchestra's opening chords; the melancholy suffusing the first choral entry has
the unmistakable quality expressed by the term "Russian soul." There may be a
moment or two in the "Battle on the Ice" when one fears Gergiev has whipped his
musicians into too wild a frenzy, but the muscle and force of the playing are
spectacular. That battle scene is followed by a moving account of "The Field of
the Dead," in which Olga Borodina sings the mezzo-soprano solo more beautifully
and tenderly than anyone since the great Elena Obraztsova.
As one would expect, Gergiev responds to the savagery and brilliance of the Scythian Suite at full throttle. But he is also attentive to the score's lyricism, bringing a sense of refined color to the atmospheric third movement, "Night."
The most successful of these releases, however, is the one filled entirely
with chestnuts. With the gifted musicians of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic,
Yuri Temirkanov demonstrates that a gifted and dedicated conductor can make
familiar repertory sound fresh. His witty and gleaming account of the
"Classical" Symphony generates brilliance in the fast movements, grace and
eloquence in the slow one. Seven excerpts from the second Romeo and
Juliet suite, performed with conviction and dramatic flair, offer musical
storytelling of the highest order. Temirkanov's selections follow the narrative
line of the work and he makes the listener feel as if he and his orchestra are
deeply involved in the course of events. In the final numbers, the conductor
turns up the thermostat, producing a devastating denouement in "Romeo at
Juliet's Tomb." The suite from The Love for Three Oranges, played with a
dazzling mixture of subtlety, zest and virtuosity, completes one of the best
all-Prokofiev discs in years.
