L’Orchestre de la Suisse RomandeErnest Ansermet

PROKOFIEVRomeo and Juliet: Ballet Suite

Cinderella: Ballet SuiteThe Prodigal Son

Scythian SuiteThe Love of Three Oranges

Eloquence

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SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)

CD 1 64’50

Romeo and Juliet: Ballet Suite 1 The Montagues and the Capulets 5’372 Juliet – The Little Girl 3’273 Madrigal 3’144 Minuet 2’405 Romeo and Juliet 7’336 Death of Tybalt 4’137 Masks 1’508 Dance 1’469 Romeo and Juliet before Parting 8’310 Romeo at Juliet’s Grave 6’26

The Prodigal Son: Symphonic Suite, Op. 46b! I Adagio 5’38@ II Allegro fastoso 2’57£ III Presto 2’37$ IV Andante assai 3’15% V Andante pomposo 4’27

CD 2 67’26

Cinderella: Ballet Suite1 Introduction 2’372 Pas de Chat 3’303 Quarrel 3’164 Cinderella dreams of the Ball 3’275 Fairy Grandmother and Fairy Winter 4’236 Mazurka 4’507 Cinderella Goes to the Ball 2’288 Cinderella at the Castle 6’509 Bourrée 1’19

Total timing: 132’16

0 Galop 4’13! Cinderella’s Waltz – Midnight 4’46

Scythian Suite, Op. 20@ I The Adoration of Veles and Ala 6’44£ II The Evil God and Dance of the Pagan Monsters 2’57$ III Night 5’56% IV Lolli’s Pursuit of the Evil God and Sunrise 5’05

The Love for Three Oranges: Symphonic Suite, Op. 33bis: excerpts^ March 1’40& Scherzo 2’34

L’Orchestre de la Suisse RomandeErnest Ansermet

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Prokofiev’s first ballet score was for impresarioSergei Diaghilev, the portly genius behind theBallets Russes who commissioned several ofStravinsky’s most famous ballet scores, as well asRavel’s Daphnis et Chloé and Falla’s El sombrerode tres picos. The two men were introduced inLondon in 1914, and Diaghilev was so impressedwith Prokofiev’s music that he commissioned anew work from him – a ballet to be titled Alaand Lolli, based on nomads who had flourishedin the southern part of modern-day Russiaseveral centuries before the birth of Christ. Thescenario, by Sergei Gorodetsky, concerns Ala,daughter of the sun god Veles, and the mortalhero Lolli. An enemy god abducts Ala in thenight, and she is rescued by Lolli, aided by Veles,who is represented by a blistering sunrise.

In the score’s primitivism and emphasis onpounding rhythms, Prokofiev clearly wasinfluenced by Stravinsky’s Le Sacre duPrintemps. When the score was nearlycomplete, Diaghilev invited Prokofiev to Rome,heard the score, and gently broke the news tohim: the music was unsatisfactory. Theimpresario nevertheless encouraged Prokofievand treated him with generosity and kindness.Privately, though, he expressed doubts as towhether Prokofiev really was all that he hadappeared to be at their initial meeting. Finally,

Diaghilev advised Prokofiev to scrap Ala and Lolliand to try sometimes else. This turned out to bethe ballet Chout (The Buffoon). Although forvarious reasons Chout would not be produceduntil 1921, Diaghilev was better pleased withthe results, and Prokofiev’s status with Diaghilevas ‘second son’ (Stravinsky was ‘first son’) wassolidified.

Not wanting to waste music, Prokofiev adaptedAla and Lolli into an orchestral work, whichbecame known as Scythian Suite. When it waspremiered in January 1916, with the composerconducting, many objected to the music’s garishcolors and confrontational loudness. Anythingbut subtle, and not the work of a fully-developed composer, the Scythian Suite isnevertheless an exciting point on Prokofiev’spath to maturity.

One of the more amusing blunders in the field ofmusic journalism occurred in relation to aperformance of this music later that year. Writingfor a Moscow newspaper, critic LeonidSabaneyev discussed a performance of the workthe previous evening, using the opportunity totear the music to shreds, as he had done withProkofiev’s earlier works. Unbeknownst toSabaneyev, however, the performance inquestion had been postponed because notenough musicians were available to play the

densely-scored music. Prokofiev quickly and verypublicly pointed out Sabaneyev’s error, and thehumiliated critic had little choice but to resignfrom the paper.

Ansermet’s performance is so vivid (and was sowell recorded by Decca’s engineers in 1966) thatit might cause listeners to hallucinate coloursand shapes. There’s no point conducting thisscore if you’re going to be timid about it, andtimid Ansermet was not, yet he clearly has takenconsiderable care in preparing the music’seffects, and in creating a not misplaced subtlety.The odd half-lights in the second part of ‘TheAdoration of Veles and Ala’ do suggest a paganrite, and authentic dread pervades ‘Night’.Ansermet uses the larger-than-life score’s almostself-conscious modernism to evoke a long-forgotten era of superstition and legend.

In 1918, eager to leave behind the distractingpolitical turmoil his native land was experiencing,Prokofiev left Russia and headed west. Theopera The Love for Three Oranges wascommissioned by Chicago’s opera house soonafter his arrival in the United States. The work’sreliance on ironic commedia dell’arte traditionsmade it a perfect fit for Prokofiev’s irreverentpersonality. It concerns a depressed,hypochondriacal Prince, who as punishment forlaughing at the sorceress Fata Morgana, is

cursed to seek out and fall in love with threeoranges. These he finds in a castle, guarded bya gigantic basso profondo cook. Escaping withthe oranges into a parched desert, the Princeand his jester find that each contains not orangejuice but a beautiful princess. The first twoprincesses almost immediately perish from thirst,but the last, Ninetta, is saved in the nick of time,thanks to a bucket of water produced bymembers of the on-stage audience. All endswell, but not before Ninetta is temporarilychanged into a rat.

A suite, compiled by the composer in 1924,follows the opera’s key events. Two of its sixmovements are included here. The famous (andpopularly abused) wrong-note March representsthe royal entourage, and the Scherzoaccompanies the Prince’s travels – propelled by apair of bellows – to the castle where the orangesare to be found. Ansermet’s moderate tempogives the March a not unwelcome sinisterquality, while his Scherzo, also not unduly fast,blends gossamer with satire.

Although they were impressed with his pianism,American audiences didn’t quite know what tomake of his music, and so Prokofiev thecomposer found that Europe – Paris, in particular– was a more congenial destination. TheProdigal Son (1929) was the fourth of

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Prokofiev’s ballets, and another commissionfrom Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes. Nothaving found Diaghilev to be the most reliablecollaborator, and also because he had plannedconcerts in the Soviet Union during the winterof 1928-29, Prokofiev initially resisted the ideaof working on a new ballet for Paris. However,with his wife in an advanced stage ofpregnancy with their second son, and withSoviet contacts unable to guarantee that histrip would be financially worthwhile, thecomposer changed his travel plans, remainedin Paris and accepted the commission.

The ballet, with a scenario by Boris Kochno, andchoreography by George Balanchine – still earlyin his career – is based on the familiar Biblicalparable told in the Gospel According to St. Luke.The Prodigal Son leaves home and falls in with acarousing and loose-living crowd. His badcompanions enjoy his company and his wine,and he is seduced by a gold-digging Siren – adramatically effective addition by Kochno. Theyoung man is then robbed and abandoned byhis companions. At this point, he feels remorse,and chastened, returns home to his rejoicing andforgiving father. (Kochno omitted the characterof the jealous brother, thereby weakening theparable’s message of unconditional forgiveness.)Prokofiev was enthusiastic about the scenario

and worked quickly; perhaps he saw a little ofhimself in the title character.

As the premiere drew closer, however, tensionsrose. Prokofiev repeatedly expressed hisantipathy for Balanchine’s choreography, andfor the staging in general. Diaghilev eventuallybecame so annoyed that he told Prokofiev thatif he didn’t like what he saw, he could leave.On the other hand, Diaghilev was enthusiastic(at least in public) about Prokofiev’s score. Onopening night, lead dancer Serge Lifar refusedto go on until the very last moment, his feelingshurt by what he perceived as a lack of supportfrom his ‘spiritual father’ Diaghilev.Nevertheless, the first performance was atremendous popular and critical success foreveryone involved. As it turned out, this wasthe final season of the Ballet Russes; Diaghilevalready was ill, and upon his death two monthslater, the company was disbanded. Music notused in The Prodigal Son later found its wayinto Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony.

The ballet’s lyricism is emphasized in Ansermet’satmospheric reading. His early experience as aballet conductor, plus his life-long specializationin contemporary music, serve him well in thisrecording, which is among the score’s mostpersuasive. The woodwinds of the Orchestre dela Suisse Romande are called upon to depict the

oily duplicity of the Prodigal Son’s companionsin carousal, and they do so with aplomb. Again,Decca’s engineers did their work well; decadeslater, the recording still has tremendous detailand impact.

Prokofiev’s first major work upon his return tothe Soviet Union in 1935 was the full-lengthballet Romeo and Juliet. This was a majordeparture from his work with Diaghilev, whoprobably would have been against the very ideaof such an old-fashioned ‘story ballet’ andrepulsed by the relative provincialism of Sovietballet companies at the time. The ballet’sproduction history is very complicated. Originally,it had been requested for Leningrad’s Kirov Balletby Sergei Radlov, but the commission wasrescinded after Sergei Kirov himself, a powerfulofficial in the Communist party, was assassinatedin his office – possibly at the behest of Stalin. Theresulting shift in power displaced Radlov, andRadlov’s projects were canceled. The BolshoiTheatre in Moscow then entered into a contractto present the new ballet, but that contract alsowas broken, supposedly because Prokofiev’smusic was deemed unsuitable. Early on, it hadbeen decided by Radlov and the composer thatthis version of Romeo and Juliet, unlikeShakespeare’s, should end happily, with Julietcoming out of her death-like swoon just in time

to save Romeo from killing himself. Prokofievattempted to justify this, arguing that ‘livingpeople can dance, but the dead cannot dancelying down’, but probably it is all for the bestthat Shakespeare’s original story was retained inthe end.

With no staged production of the balletimmediately in sight, Prokofiev assembled twoindependent orchestral suites of some of itsmusic, and these were first performed in 1936and 1937, respectively. The complete ballet hadto wait until 1938 for an actual production, andthen that occurred not in Leningrad or Moscow,but in the Czechoslovakian city of Brno. Perhapsembarrassed at such one-upmanship, the KirovTheatre reopened talks with the composer, anda staged version was finally mounted in theSoviet Union in 1940. Before that could happen,though, an unwilling Prokofiev was imposedupon to make more changes and additions tothe score, partly because the dancers still foundthe music so difficult to understand, and sounlike the classical ballets they knew. Two weeksbefore opening night, the production was nearlycanceled yet again when the dancers threateneda boycott. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed,and the ballet was a great success. Even thepoliticos were pleased.

On this recording, Ansermet, like many

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conductors, created his own selection ofexcerpts from the score by picking and choosingbetween the two suites. (Prokofiev created athird suite – not represented in Ansermet’sselection – in 1946.) Again, his experience as aballet conductor is displayed here; this is not anexaggeratedly ‘symphonic’ reading, but ratherone that is balanced, with reasonable temposand an ear for precise rhythms.

Galina Ulanova, the Kirov ballerina who took therole of Juliet in 1940, was one of the dancerswho professed to be mystified by Prokofiev’smusic at the time. She and Prokofiev warmedup to each other, however, and it was she whoresponded to his initially casual idea that perhapshe could create a ballet based on the story ofCinderella. And so, early in 1941, he beganwork on the new ballet, only to lay it aside laterthat year when Germany attacked the SovietUnion. Other projects – such as a massiveoperatic treatment of Tolstoy’s War and Peace– then took precedence.

It wasn’t until the summer of 1943 whenProkofiev, evacuated to the city of Perm, wasable to complete Cinderella. Originally, otherevacuated members of the Kirov Theatreplanned to begin rehearsals later that summer,with an eye to producing the ballet by the endof the year. This proved impossible, however,

and Cinderella did not reach the stage until theend of the war – and then not at the Kirov, butat the Bolshoi. Ulanova danced the title role. Bythen, Prokofiev was in poor health – he hadsuffered a serious concussion near the start ofthe year – and to conserve his energy, hewatched only one act per night, over threeconsecutive nights, and even that over theextreme protest of his physicians.

If Diaghilev would have been cool to the idea ofRomeo and Juliet, he would have beendownright frosty about Cinderella, whichevoked the balletic heyday of Tchaikovsky. Itwould be unfair, though, to accuse Prokofiev ofartistic regression with this ballet. It is aconservative ballet in many ways, but within thelimits of that conservatism, Prokofiev took hisinspiration and craftsmanship to new levels. Itwas a ballet that dancers could understand, andthat Russian audiences, in need ofuncomplicated entertainment following thehardships of the war, so badly wanted. Prokofievknew on which side the bread was buttered,and the premiere was a success.

The scenario, by Nikolai Volkov, is largelytraditional, eschewing the more macabrevariations of the story which had been prevalentin Russia. (In one version, the evil stepsisters gettheir comeuppance by having one eye each

pecked out by doves.) Tradition also wasemphasized by the prevalence of genre dancesand variations, in the style of The Nutcracker.Decades earlier, Prokofiev ridiculed just this sortof ballet, but times had changed, and so hadProkofiev’s circumstances. He was now in lovewith the much younger Mira Mendelson, whobecame his wife in everything but name, and ithas been suggested that Prokofiev identified her– formerly an impecunious university student –with Cinderella, and that he identified himselfwith Cinderella’s Prince – in fame andimportance, if not in youth or physical appeal!

Ansermet’s generous selection of excerptsprovides listeners with an excellent overview ofthe ballet – not just of its genre pieces, but of itsmoods and its action as well. From the openingbars, we feel the conductor is in sympathy withthe music, and with Prokofiev’s heroine. Thenumbers in waltz rhythm are played withelegance, but also with an ear for their wanmelancholy. When the clock strikes midnightand Cinderella is forced to make her precipitousexit from the Prince’s ball, Ansermet registers theincipient panic of the moment, and even drawsa parallel between it and the aftermath ofTybalt’s slaying in Romeo and Juliet. Cinderellamay be a fairy tale, but like many fairy tales, ittouches upon some of our most basic hopes and

fears, and it is dangerous to underestimate thepower of fable. Prokofiev gave it its due, and sodid Ansermet.

Raymond Tuttle

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Swiss conductor ERNEST ANSERMET was bornin Vevey on 11 November 1883 and died aged85 in Geneva on 20 February 1969. He wasinclined to music from an early age, learning theviolin and the clarinet. He was also interested inmathematics and taught the subject. Ansermetstudied music in Paris and Geneva and made hisconducting debut in 1910. Although Ansermetis particularly associated with the Geneva-basedL’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, he also guest-conducted throughout his career – including inAmerica (with numerous top orchestras thereand in 1962 conducting Debussy’s Pelléas etMélisande, an opera Ansermet twice recorded,at the Metropolitan, New York) and England(with London orchestras and not least when heconducted the première of Benjamin Britten’sopera The Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne in1946). Ansermet had previously made his debutat the Salzburg Festival, conducting the ViennaPhilharmonic in 1942.

Ansermet’s relationship with the SuisseRomande Orchestra lasted for 50 years – from1918, when he founded the orchestra, to 1967when he stood down as its conductor (andhanded the reins to Paul Kletzki). Ansermetcontinued to work in Geneva until his death; hisfinal concert was in December 1968 andconsisted of a typically eclectic mix of composers

– on that occasion it was J.S. Bach, Bartók,Debussy and Honegger. In his early days(between 1911 and 1927) Ansermet heldappointments in Montreux and Buenos Airesand also conducted for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russescompany. It is however the Ansermet/SuisseRomande association that remains an indivisiblepartnership – one kept alive by the manyrecordings they made for Decca and whichdocument Ansermet’s highly-regardedinterpretations of Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky(he knew all three composers) as well as lucidand satisfying versions of symphonies byBeethoven, Brahms (both complete) and Haydnas well as copious further examples of French,German and Russian repertoire, both core andless familiar. LP collectors have long treasuredthese recordings, which fully exploit the splendidacoustics of the Victoria Hall in Geneva, and theycontinue to grace the catalogue on compact discfor their musical and audiophile excellence.

Ansermet prepared performances notable fortheir clarity and intelligence; he took all heneeded from the composer’s score and saw noneed to add his own gloss (or vanity) but tofocus on the composer’s intentions and – asAnsermet himself said – ‘to touch the heart ofthe music so as to make its heart-beats heard bythe listener’. Thus Ansermet’s art is not only

authoritative it is also timeless and cuts throughfads and fashions.

Criticism has been levied on the technical qualityof the Suisse Romande Orchestra. While it is truethat the ensemble was not super-virtuoso orimmersed in centuries-old tradition, what isalways apparent in these recordings is that theorchestra consisted of dedicated andknowledgeable musicians very much attuned toAnsermet’s direction and leaving the listener inno doubt as to their candid commitment tomusical truth. Sometimes fallible in execution,maybe – but also capable of inspiration – thereis a musical focus that engrosses, illuminates and sustains.

Colin Anderson

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Ernest Ansermet’s complete Prokofiev recordings for DECCA:

Romeo and Juliet; CinderellaThe Prodigal Son; Scythian SuiteThe Love of Three OrangesDecca Eloquence 480 0830

Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2Piano Concerto No. 3Ruggiero Ricci · Julius KatchenDecca Eloquence 480 0837

Symphonies Nos. 1 (two versions), 5 & 6Decca Eloquence 480 0834

Recording producers: James Walker (Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, The Love for Three Oranges); John Mordler (Prodigal Son, Scythian Suite)Recording engineers: Roy Wallace (Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, The Love for Three Oranges); JamesLock (Prodigal Son, Scythian Suite)Recording locations: Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, February 1961 (The Love for Three Oranges),October 1961 (Cinderella), November 1961 (Romeo and Juliet), November 1966 (Prodigal Son,Scythian Suite)Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-HomjiArt direction: Chilu Tong · www.chilu.comBooklet editor: Bruce Raggatt

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480 0830