Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges: Suite Op. 33a

A popular programme of works including the orchestral suite for the film score of Lieutenant Kijé. The original film score contains two songs which are often performed by solo saxophone and orchestra but are recorded here in their original (but seldom heard) version for baritone voice.

With acclaimed previous recordings of music by Prokofiev, as well as Stravinsky, Mendelssohn and most recently Rachmaninov, Andrew Litton and his Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are a tried-and-tested team in this repertoire. They make the most of the enormous palette of colours and moods provided by these three scores.

The orchestra has toured extensively in the UK at the beginning of the year, and Litton has appeared on several radio programmes including a Radio 3 documentary and in-Tune.

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (b. 1931) is the last living survivor of a great Russian quartet of conductors consisting of Mravinsky, Kondrashin and Svetlanov. He was the highly distinguished principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 1981, an exciting period in the orchestra’s history, faithfully captured here.

The Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev recordings have never been issued before on CD, while the Mussorgsky was released on the now defunct BBC Radio Classics series over 15 years ago.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4 from the 1979 Leeds Music Festival is one of the conductor’s most inspired performances, rivalling Mravinsky in his celebrated accounts. Rozhdestvensky treats it as a broad tragedy of the highest order without sentimentalising it.

Rozhdestvensky’s championship of Mussorgsky produces a rarity – the version of A Night on a Bare Mountain used in the composer’s Sorochinsky Fair, which includes a chorus and a bass-baritone (David Wilson-Jones). This version, from the 1981 BBC Proms, is sung in English.

Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges Suite was given on a Far East tour in Kurashiki, Japan in 1981 and benefits from Rozhdestvensky’s long experience with ballet and, in this performance, his fiery impetus.

This and the other two 2-CD sets - 4800834 and 4800837 - represent all of Ansermet's Prokofiev recordings for Decca (with the exception of a mono recording of the March and Scherzo from The Love for Three Oranges - the stereo version appears here).

A stunning release featuring some of the finest works composed by Prokofiev which fully demonstrates his love for ballet, orchestral, film and opera composition. All brought together by two outstanding conductors – Dimitri Mitropulos and Ernest Ansermet.

Recorded between 1954 -1961

This 2-channel Hybrid SACD is a live recording from 2009 of part of a large ‘Composer Festival’ featuring the music of Sergei Prokofiev. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy perform well-known suites of music from two of the composer’s works written for stage and screen, the film Lieutenant Kijé, and the opera The Love for Three Oranges along with his version of the fairlytale, The Ugly Duckling.

The Russian conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy is internationally renowned for his interpretation of the piano and orchestral music of the composers of his native country. Sadly, due to arthritis in his fingers he has been able to play the piano less and less in recent years, and during this period he has taken the opportunity to focus his attention on his role as a conductor. He became Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the time of these performances. Sergei Prokofiev composed the score for Lieutenant Kijé, in 1933 for the film of the same name, and compiled a suite of music from the soundtrack which became his opus 60. The “Love for Three Oranges” suite is taken from the opera that Prokofiev wrote in 1918. The story is based on a play by Gozzi that is written in the Commedia dell’Arte tradition.

The music from The Buffoon is complemented here by two further colourful suites, that from the opera The Love for Three Oranges and the lesser-known, late Waltz Suite, which brings together music from the opera War and Peace, the ballet Cinderella and the film Lermontov.

When Arturo Toscanini fell out with NBC in 1943 and refused to conduct the orchestra which had been specially founded for him in 1937, replacement conductors were engaged. Amongst these was Leopold Stokowski, who conducted a series of broadcast concerts over the next few years, until Toscanini eventually resumed his post. These Stokowski broadcasts have gained legendary status, not least because of the rare experience of hearing him in charge of Toscanini’s own orchestra. This CD brings together an important collection of those performances taken from the original broadcasts, with some items actually introduced by Stokowski himself. Also here are works that Stokowski never recorded commercially, making a release of considerable importance to collectors of great conductors on record.