Prokofieff's "Russian Dreams" reviews from New York

Search Shop

(November 2008)

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts began its nine-part series dedicated to the works of Sergei Prokofieff—“Russian Dreams”—in November. Led by the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, the first four installments in the series focused on Prokofieff’s staged works; his music for ballet, Romeo and Juliet, The Love for Three Oranges, and his music for film.

The series continues in March, with an extended survey of Prokofieff’s orchestral music including his complete symphonies and selected concertos performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and led by Gergiev.

These special concerts will be complemented by the New York City premiere of Mark Morris’s newest full-length creation, “Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare” in May.

Reviews for Russian Dreams:

The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33
“Some successful works in the operatic canon are handed down with a built-in caveat, and for Prokofiev’s 'Love for Three Oranges,' it would seem to be this: the music comes in second to the message. Prokofiev based his opera on Carlo Gozzi’s 18th-century commedia dell’arte parody in order to skewer the standards of 19th-century opera as represented by Wagner and Verdi. According to conventional wisdom, apart from a few famous orchestral excerpts, the score simply shows Prokofiev spinning serviceable notes for a work in which theatrical whimsy and spectacle are paramount. ...

"Nonsense. 'Love for Three Oranges,' written in 1919 for a 1921 Chicago premiere, falls short in the creature comforts of Romantic opera; there are no heroic or heart-rending arias, no rousing choruses. Yes, that is part of the point. But a concert performance by the conductor Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra and Chorus of the Maryinsky Theater at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday afternoon was a reminder that this opera is an endlessly inventive, vividly characterized musical entertainment in its own right.”
The New York Times

“I've seen a number of productions in my day, but I can't recall any funnier than this. …
In the end, though, it is Prokofiev's dazzling orchestral score that makes this opera so effective.”
MusicalAmerica.com

Scythian Suite, Op.20
"The 'Scythian Suite' (1915), a shocker of a piece, amounts to Prokofiev’s 'Rite of Spring.' It recycles music originally written for a ballet scenario titled 'Ala and Lolly' in 1914-15, in the aftermath of Stravinsky’s breakthrough ballet. Like the 'Rite,' which had its infamous premiere in 1913, the scenario is given a pre-Christian, pagan setting, the Scythian empire. The suite opens with a scene of primal worship and sacrifice to Veles, a sun god, and Ala, a wooden idol representing the power of nature.

“The piece is scored for a huge orchestra with an extra battery of brasses and an extensive percussion section. The orchestra plays an urgent, elemental and repetitive theme in thickly textured, gloriously messy orchestration, with raucous woodwinds, skittish strings and insistent percussion.

“The music could be evoking the sound of a tribe of worshipers as they intone a chant in unison, though their singing is raw and unfocused, with pitches splattered all over the place. In calmer moments, a reflective melody for harps and flutes comes piercing through a dissonant orchestral haze.”
The New York Times

Suite from Le pas d’acier (“The Steel Step”), Op. 41
“'The Steel Step,' from 1926, was essentially a piece of propaganda, a metaphorical drama about the breakdown of the corrupt old society and the emergence of the new proletarian state. But it was easy to forget all that while listening to this fantastical music, with its pummeling rhythms and mechanized riffs depicting the full-throttled productivity of the people’s factories.
The New York Times

For more information on "Russian Dreams" please visit http://www.lincolncenter.org/asc_load_screen.asp?screen=gp_prokofiev_main.

> News Search

musicshop@boosey.com

0800 731 4778 Freephone (UK customers) +44 (0)870 421 5453 International reduced rate

Shop Help & FAQs

Boosey & Hawkes

Search Shop

Browse shop

Composer A-Z

Sheet Music

CDs & DVDs

Books, Gifts & more

Other shops

Prokofieff's "Russian Dreams" reviews from New York

Currency converter

VIP Club

Help and FAQs

Affiliate Programme