Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet is one of the composer's greatest works. He gave it an engaging directness that made it appealing to broad audiences without compromising his artistic standards the way he felt constrained to when the Soviet authorities were breathing down his neck, and he succeeded in translating Shakespeare to the stage without trivializing the story -- no small accomplishment. The ballet contains some of the composer's most sensuous, melodic, and dramatic music, so it's no surprise that The Three Suites that
Prokofiev extracted from the score are among his most-performed pieces. The suites use about half of the music of the score, apparently the parts the composer liked best, so the logic behind this CD, which includes all the music from The Three Suites, but played in the order in which they appear in the ballet, is sound. Unfortunately, the performance by
Andrew Litton conducting the
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra is disappointingly mediocre. The orchestra plays accurately for the most part, although the coordination of pizzicatos is sometimes ragged, but without the fire to bring the music alive. The contrasting moments of terror and intimacy are underplayed, and the lack of dramatic differentiation dooms the project. Even though this is a hybrid SACD, the recording quality emphasizes the blandness of the performance; there are moments when the balance is so poor that essential orchestral details are lost or inaudible. The concept of combining The Three Suites like this is terrific, but for it to work, it will have to wait for a performance and recording more compelling than this one.