Great to have Dorian CDs once again available, courtesy of Sono Luminus! (See July 28 Audio News.) This one carries a 1991 date but is fully up to current audio standard due to the highly perfectionist digital recording practices of Dorian’s founders.
This is an interesting and unique pairing of works with a strong savage and primitive slant to them. Rite doesn’t have quite the impact of some of the many competing recorded versions, but it is an exciting performance in first-rate sonics. Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite is a concert version of the music from his ballet Ala and Lolli, and like The Rite of Spring, is based on prehistoric history. The Greek historian Herodotus left an account of a tribe of barbarians known at the Scythians, who lived around the Black Sea. They were a ferocious people engaging in hideous practices, and the music – similar to some of the futurist Russian works – communicates this effectively with some of the composer’s most atonal and savage music. In fact Prokofiev was looking to shock his listeners with his Ballets Russe score in much the same way Stravinsky had with The Rite of Spring.
Few today would be scandalized by the scenario, costumes, or music of the ballet, but I must say I seem to have mellowed in old age since at one time this was the only music of Prokofiev I couldn’t stand – and now it sounds most exciting and listenable!
– John Sunier
