Music and Vision homepage

CD Spotlight

A Strong Impression

Prokofiev's ballet
'Romeo and Juliet' -
impresses
GERALD FENECH

'... this interpretation has passion and drama aplenty, and climaxes are handled with meticulous control.'

Sergey Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet - complete ballet. © 2018 Naxos Rights US Inc

We largely owe the existence of this work to Sergey Radiov, a well-respected stage director of the 1930s who was famous for staging Shakespeare's plays. A friend of Prokofiev from before the Revolution, he was aware of the composer's ballets written in Paris for the great Diaghilev, whose company had taken the French capital by storm shortly before the 1917 upheavals. The 1929 ballet The Prodigal Son had already consolidated Prokofiev's fame as a composer of a newly forged lyrical style full of emotional depth, so when Romeo and Juliet had its premiere in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on 30 December 1938, the composer was well in command of his abilities to write for the dance medium...

Copyright © 5 September 2018 Gerald Fenech,
Gzira, Malta

-------

PROKOFIEV: ROMEO AND JULIET - COMPLETE BALLET

ROMEO AND JULIET

SERGEI PROKOFIEV

NAXOS

BALTIMORE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

 << Music & Vision home      Recent CD reviews       Alex Klein >>