SERGEI PROKOFIEV

Chandos brings together a fine programme of Prokofiev’s orchestral works to add to its Classics series. This first selection offers six unique discs performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conducted by Neeme Jarvi. Familiar performers on the Chandos label, they are renowned for their Prokofiev interpretations.

Included on this first re-issue is a mixture of familiar and little-known repertoire. The well-known and witty Symphonic Suite, Lieutenant Kije, Opus 60 conceived as a film score, is complemented by The Suite from ‘The Stone Flower’ Op 118 and the lesser-known works Dreams Op.6, Autumn and Andante Op.50.

Gramophone wrote of Jarvi’s performance of Lieutenant Kijé, ‘His is a splendidly characterful performance which has the benefit of an excellent Chandos recording.’ The Northern Echo commented on the release, ‘This is vintage Prokofiev, quirky and pungent in places but always full of interest. The Op.50 Andante for Strings, and the Symphonic Sketch, and early work complete a very satisfying record’.

The sharp satirical aspect for which Prokofiev is widely known is engagingly expressed in the suite Lieutenant Kijé. This was taken from his first film score (1933), his first major project after he had decided to return permanently to his native country after some fifteen years in the West. The film was to be made in Leningrad as a satire on the foibles of Tsar Paul 1, from a story by Yury Tynyanov, The Tsar Sleeps. By a slip of a bureaucratic pen an imaginary Lieutenant Kijé is entered on certain military documents, for whom an identity and an existence have to he invented once the documents have been approved by the Tsar.

From the first distant fanfare the sense of magical fantasy and colourful invention are brilliantly rendered and recorded
There is a superb account of the Lieutenant Kije Suite and a really outstanding version of the rarely heard suite from The Stone Flower, with this fine orchestra at its best


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