Alain Vernhes, Martial Defontaine, Francois Le Roux, Serghei Khomov, Sandrine Piau, Anna Shafajinskaja, and Sir Willard White star in this de Nederlandse Opera production of the Prokofiev opera conducted by Stephane Deneve.

Sergey Prokofiev's spectacular music for Ivan the Terrible is arguably one of his finest film scores. This classic recording of the oratorio arranged by Abram Stasevich conducted by Leonard Slatkin is filled with Prokofiev's irrepressible energy and eloquent melodic power. Ivan, the first 'Tsar of all the Russias' is portrayed in the film not as the bloodthirsty tyrant his nickname suggests, but as a sorrowful and lonely man, betrayed by his friends, deprived of love, and determined at all costs to preserve a unified Russia under constant attack from abroad and treasonous intrigues at home.

The recordings of Prokofiev's Sonatas No. 9, 8 and 4 are derived from radio broadcasts in Germany (1964), Switzerland (1971) and Turkey (1973) and that of the Toccata from a Soviet Union radio broadcast of Biret's first Moscow recital during her sixteen concert tour of the USSR in 1960 at the age of nineteen. The recording of Piano Sonata No. 2, the second recording of Sonata No. 7, both made direct-to-disc in 1977 at the RCA Studio in New York, and the Swiss, German, Turkish and Soviet radio recordings are all unedited single takes.

The pianist Zlata Chochieva is well known for creating unexpected associations. In "Chiaroscuro", her first album for naive (V7542, 2022), she had combined the worlds of Scriabin and Mozart, in whom she hears not only the same desire for clarity and weightlessness but also a similar poetic sense of rhetoric. Her next album ("i'm Freien", V7959, 2023), a homage to nature, revealed alongside Ravel's Miroirs and Schumann's Waldszenen a short cycle, so little known and graceful (Petite Histoire), by Felix Draeseke! No wonder she is now offering us, for her first album with orchestra, one of the most obscure works of Russian Romanticism, the Piano Concerto by Rimsky-Korsakov. Written in 1883 in memory of Franz Liszt, whose two opuses in the genre strongly influenced the author of Scheherazade, this Concerto, with it's monothematic structure, built on a Russian folk theme, had greatly impressed Balakirev, who was surprised to hear such an idiomatically written soloist part, from a composer who was not a pianist himself. At the age of fourteen, Zlata Chochieva had played the work under the direction of Mikhail Pletnev, then head of the Russian National Orchestra. This Concerto remains for her a "miracle of taste, poetry and inspiration". Her intelligent and limpid playing is ideally suited to the very delicate lyricism that Rimsky-Korsakov deploys throughout this astonishing score full of numerous and subtle contrasts. At the heart of this recording, where Zlata Chochieva is joined by the musicians of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the German conductor Karl-Heinz Steffens, surges the merciless ardor of Sergei Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto. In a departure from the stormy way in which this formidable score (for the fingers) is generally approached by pianists, Zlata Chochieva prefers a certain sense of phantasmagoria, rightly recalling that Prokofiev, as a spiritual disciple of Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, enjoyed stories, old Russian fairy tales and legends. After this, we have a total change of atmosphere with the Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra by Alexander Tsfasman which concludes the album. An eminent disciple of Felix Blumenfeld, an incredibly talented pianist, to whom Shostakovich intended piano part of one of his film scores, Tsfasman introduced American jazz to the Soviet Union, and formed the first orchestra dedicated to the genre. In Russia, he premiered Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, a composer for whom he had the deepest admiration. A brilliantly written, comforting and sincere score, his Jazz Suite sometimes evokes the American composer but above all Hollywood and Soviet film scores. Not without a most contagious and mischievous pleasure, Zlata Chochieva and Karl-Heinz Steffens revel in it's ingenuous charms (Snowflakes). 17 July 2024

This recording is the first time I have immersed myself in the world of Sergei Prokofiev, a composer who has always held a special place in my life and in my repertoire. His Sixth and Seventh Piano Sonatas were written almost simultaneously at the start of the Second World War and are very similar in form and content. The conflict between man and machine, the individual and the collective, complexity and simplicity lies at the heart of their narrative. The music combines philosophical symbolism and almost orchestral polyphonic writing with brilliant piano technique and vibrant colouristic effects, making this pair perhaps Prokofiev's two most frequently performed works for solo piano. My connection with both sonatas began many years ago, so I was very interested in taking a quick snapshot of how this music resonates with me today, in the midst of these troubled times. Sergei Redkin

On the 1710 Stradivarius known as the "Vieuxtemps, Hauser", violinist Ning Feng plays two monumental Russian violin concertos with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tung-Chieh Chuang. In the First Violin Concertos of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the soloist is confronted with technical acrobatics and many contrasting moods, all of which Ning Feng navigates expertly and interprets in such a way that "the more you listen, the more you want to listen", as Gramophone put it.

Cello Sonatas, Klingende Buchs

Violin Sonatas, Five Melodies

Works For Cello And Piano

PROKOFIEV, S.: Oboe Quintet, Op. 39 / Overture on Hebrew The

BACK IN THE USSR

Classical Music

Prokofiev's imaginative orchestration has made the ballet Romeo and Juliet world-famous, primarily through the orchestral suites as opposed to the ballet as a whole. Unmistakably a child of the Rimsky-Korsakov school of orchestration, Prokofiev's orchestra arsenal for the ballet includes tenor saxophone, four mandolins, cornet, celesta, organ, piano and a number of percussion instruments. This richness in orchestration allows for unique timbres that the composer employs in the illustration of one of the world's most iconic love stories. While Russian music has been integral to the Oslo Philharmonic's recording and performance schedule in the three years that Vasily Petrenko has been at the helm, it has held an important position in the orchestra repertoire dating back to it's recordings with Jansons in the 1980s and 1990s. The exploration of this vast musical catalogue is set to continue in the orchestra's future projects with Petrenko, whose tenure as Chief Conductor was recently renewed until the 2019-20 seasion. The Oslo Philharmonic is known for it's spirit of discovery and it's reputation for finesse. Under new Chief Conductor Vasily Petrenko, it works at the highest levels of detail and style. The orchestra travels the globe, but never feels more at home than on their stage in the Oslo Concert Hall.

Also available on Blu-ray

Sergey Prokofiev
ROMEO AND JULIET

Romeo – Federico Bonelli
Juliet – Lauren Cuthbertson
Mercutio – Alexander Campbell
Tybalt – Bennet Gartside
Benvolio – Dawid Trzensimiech
Paris – Valeri Hristov
Lord Capulet – Christopher Saunders
Lady Capulet – Christina Arestis
Esclasus – Gary Avis

Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House Orchestra
Barry Wordsworth, conductor

Kenneth MacMillan, choreographer

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, March 2012

Bonus:
- Documentaries on Kenneth MacMillan’s production
- Sharps, Points and Pirouettes – the famous sword fight scene
- Cast gallery

Picture format: NTSC 16:9 anamorphic
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles (bonus): French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese
Running time: 158 mins (ballet) + 15 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD9)

Classical Music