Word: prokofievs
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...American pianist in his age group. His plat form manner is nononsense, but at the peak of his form he stirs poetry, fire and steel into whatever he plays. At a time when most younger American per formers make their loudest noise in the flashier side of the repertory -Prokofiev, Bartok, Liszt and the more extroverted Chopin - Graffman has matured into a musician able to challenge Europe's best in the more substantial classical and early romantic repertory...
...PROKOFIEV: IVAN THE TERRIBLE (Melodiya/ Angel). Prokofiev composed this music for Sergei Eisenstein's movie Ivan the Terrible in the early 1940s, but his means (oratorio-like) and aims (monumental) hardly allow it to be described as background music. Much of it is so impressive as to provide ammunition for those who predict that the best new music will be composed expressly to serve other arts. Yet the other arts can overwhelm-as sometimes in this case, when the narrator in Ivan (theatrically intoned in lyrical Russian by Aleksander Estrin) makes the work sound to non-Russian-speaking listeners...
...bedecked in pounds of furs, brocade, velvet, gems and clattering swords. Czar Boris' throne room in the last act was a breathtaking showcase of Byzantine opulence, with richly colored frescoes on the multidomed ceiling and an elaborately carved golden throne beneath two 800-lb. chandeliers. In Prokofiev's War and Peace, which ran for four hours the following night and called for 40 soloists even in the condensed version, some scenes were framed in 50-ft. Doric columns inflated with com pressed air, while others featured cracking rifles, flapping flags and rank upon rank of charging soldiers...
...PROKOFIEV: CONCERTO NO. 2 IN G MI NOR; SIBELIUS: CONCERTO IN D MINOR (RCA Victor). Itzhak Perlman, the 21-year-old Israeli violinist, has already made an impressive name for himself in the concert circuit. This is his recording debut, and it confirms his growing prestige. He manages to make Prokofiev's percussive, rather frantic concerto sing, and his considerate understanding of Sibelius' darkly sad Romanticism is powerful. Conductor Erich Leinsdorf's Boston Symphony gives Perlman rich support...
IRINA ARKHIPOVA: RUSSIAN OPERA & CANTATA ARIAS (Melodiya/Angel). The dark passion of good Russian music is welcome to even the most jaded ears, and this collection of arias is particularly affecting. While most of the composers (Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev) are familiar, the excerpts are less so. Among the most intriguing is from Not Love Alone, an opera about the love life on a collective farm by Rodion Shchedrin. The youngest composer represented on the album (and husband of Prima Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya), Shchedrin finds room for originality within conventional Soviet Realism-which means late, late, late Romanticism. However superficial, his melodies...