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Searching for Prokofiev
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 18/03/2014
» Today, a few miscellaneous items and recommendations. A few weeks back while discussing Andrew Litton’s recent BIS recording of Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony with the Bergen Philharmonic, I lamented the current unavailability in any format of Eugene Ormandy’s old Columbia recording of the piece with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Litton’s account is very good, as are others by conductors like Jarvi, Weller and, especially, Mravinsky, but it was Ormandy who best traced the link between Prokofiev’s gift for long-lined, heartbreaker themes — those in the first two movements of this symphony, for example — and the achievement of Russian Romantic composers like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.
Illuminating a dark message
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 28/05/2013
» Listeners with an ear for the symphonies of Shostakovich and Prokofiev must have noticed the similarities between their their respective fifth and sixth symphonies. Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony as "A Soviet Composer's Reply to Just Criticism" after taking a pounding in Pravda (some say written by Stalin himself), for the "formalist", meaning too stylistically modern, music he had been composing previously. His Fifth, still his most popular symphony, is full of big tunes and optimism that made it an instant success, although the composer insisted later that its surface pleasures were a facade covering coded protest and anger.
Know the score
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 28/02/2012
» For whatever irrational reason, classical music listeners often think of film scores as a somewhat suspect genre. Discs of movie music won't be prominent in their collections. This prejudice doesn't hold true for movie music written by major composers _ people familiar with Prokofiev's scores for Alexander Nevsky or Lieutenant Kije must greatly outnumber those who have seen the films _ but many otherwise alert listeners are often oblivious, consciously, at least, to the artistic accomplishment represented by a good film score.