Prokofiev: The Complete Symphonies and Concertos [Box set]

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
The White Box is Naxos’ flagship boxed set series, dedicated to exploring complete areas of a composer’s work. All releases in the White Box series are presented in durable and attractive packaging with the discs enclosed in individual sleeves. From the beginning, Naxos has sought to let these masterpieces speak for themselves and in designing these boxes, the music is presented with minimal fuss. Such minimalism does not apply to the generously sized booklets, which offer full essays on each work plus a biography of the composer and artists. The booklets also contain a specially created chronology for this series, which sets events in the composer’s own life into a wider musical and overall historical context.

Tracks:

Dreams, Op.6 (Symphonic Tableau)
Autumnal Sketch, Op.8
Allegro
Larghetto
Gavotte: Non Troppo Allegro
Finale: Molto Vivace
Allegro Ben Articolato
Thema
Variation I
Variation II
Variation III
Variation IV
Variation V
Variation VI
Thema

Tracks:

Moderato
Andante
Allegro Agitato - Allegretto
Andante Mosso - Allegro Moderato
Moderato
Allegretto
Andante Espressivo
Vivace

Tracks:

Le Depart (The Departure)
Rencontre Avec Des Camarades (Meeting Friends)
L'enjoleuse (The Seductress)
Les Danseurs (The Dancers)
L'enfant Prodigue Et L'enjoleuse (The Prodigal Son And The Seductress)
L'ivresse (Drunkenness)
Pillage (The Despoiling)
Reveil Et Remords (Awakening And Remorse)
Intermede: Partage Du Butin (Interlude: Sharing The Spoils)
Le Retour (The Return)
Andante - Allegro Eroico - Allegretto
Andante Tranquillo
Moderato Quasi Allegretto
Allegro Risoluto

Tracks:

Andante
Allegro Marcato
Adagio
Allegro Giocoso
In The Struggle
In The Night
For The Brotherhood Of Man

Tracks:

Adagio Moderato
Largo
Vivace
Since We Met
Cinderella In The Palace
Mephisto Waltz
End Of The Fairy-Tale
Waltz For The New Year's Ball
Happiness

Tracks:

Andante - Allegro - Kun Woo Paik
Tema Con Variazioni - Kun Woo Paik
Allegro Ma Non Troppo - Kun Woo Paik
Vivace - Kun Woo Paik
Andante - Kun Woo Paik
Moderato - Kun Woo Paik
Vivace - Kun Woo Paik
Piano Concerto No.1 In D Flat Major, Op.10 - Kun Woo Paik

Tracks:

Andantino - Allegretto - Kun Woo Paik
Scherzo: Vivace - Kun Woo Paik
Intermezzo: Allegro Moderato - Kun Woo Paik
Finale: Allegro Tempestuoso - Kun Woo Paik
Allegro Con Brio - Kun Woo Paik
Moderato Ben Accentuato - Kun Woo Paik
Toccata: Allegro Con Fuoco - Kun Woo Paik
Larghetto - Kun Woo Paik
Vivo - Kun Woo Paik

Tracks:

Andantino - Andante Assai - Tedi Papavrami
Scherzo: Vivacissimo - Tedi Papavrami
Moderato - Allegro Moderato - Moderato - Piu Tranquillo - Tedi Papavrami
Allegro Moderato - Tedi Papavrami
Andante Assai - Allegretto - Andante Assai - Tedi Papavrami
Allegro, Ben Marcato - Tedi Papavrami
Moderato - Tedi Papavrami
Theme And Variations: Andante Dolce - Tedi Papavrami
Con Brio - Allegro Precipitato - Tedi Papavrami

Tracks:

Andante - Allegro - Alexander Rudin
Allegro Giusto - Alexander Rudin
Andante Con Moto - Allegretto - Allegro Marcato - Alexander Rudin
Andante Mosso - Alexander Rudin
Andante - Alexander Rudin
Allegretto - Alexander Rudin
No.1 In F Major - Alexander Rudin
No.2 In C Sharp Minor - Alexander Rudin

Album Description

The White Box is Naxos' flagship boxed set series, dedicated to exploring complete areas of a composer's work. All releases in the White Box series are presented in durable and attractive packaging with the discs enclosed in individual sleeves. From the beginning, Naxos has sought to let these masterpieces speak for themselves and in designing these boxes, the music is presented with minimal fuss. Such minimalism does not apply to the generously sized booklets, which offer full essays on each work plus a biography of the composer and artists. The booklets also contain a specially created chronology for this series, which sets events in the composer's own life into a wider musical and overall historical context.

Customer Reviews:

Great price, but out of tune Ukrainian brass.......2006-10-04

I love this collection simply because there's so much music in it. Yet I find that Kuchar struggles to maintain the driving pace, and wrest the fortissimo out of the orchestra, demanded by the more brutal symphonies. Most disturbing to me, though, is the fairly common occurrence of high-profile brass notes, and somewhat less often, woodwinds, that are just out of tune. I realize the 2nd and 3rd symphonies are chromatic, and fairly dissonant, but you can still clearly hear intonation problems. Check out the counterpoint line at 0:17 in Variation I of Symphony No. 2's Theme and Variations, the ending of Symphony No. 3's Allegro agitato - Allegretto, 1:29-1:36 of Symphony No. 5's Andante, or the woodwind intro of Symphony No. 6's Largo.

A Super-Bargain But Variable Performances.......2004-06-05

This set contains not only all the symphonies and all the concerti for piano, for violin, and for cello, it also contains some ballet music (The Prodigal Son, for instance, which is rarely recorded), the Waltz Suite (delectable music rarely heard in the concert hall), and the almost-never-heard Unaccompanied Violin Sonata, among other tidbits, all on 9 fully-packed CDs.

Taking them category by category and with some attention to individual performances, I would start by saying that the five piano concerti, as well-played as they are here, are simply swamped by Vladimir Ashkenazy's set with André. Further, the Naxos performances (with the excellent Korean pianist, Kun Woo Paik, with Antoni Wit and the Polish Radio Symphony) are in somewhat glassy sound; their more recent provenance does not give them improved sound over the Ashkenazy set. I did like the verve of the D Flat Concerto (No. 1) in particular, however.

The Violin Concertos fare better, both in terms of performance and particularly in sonics. Tedi Papavrami is a young Albanian violinst, erstwhile pupil of Pierre Amoyal. The first thing to say is that he does not seem be copying any of his violinistic predecessors in these concerti. Notice in particular how well he projects the top line in the double-stop passages and his affinity for the lyrical aspects of the music. He has technique to spare, generally spot-on intonation, and real musical feeling. The only competition on a single disc is that of Gil Shaham who plays these concerti with real flair. Neither of them plays the Second Concerto with the laser-like intensity of Heifetz, however. And in the First there is the still-paramount Oistrakh. Still, these are creditable performances and I'm glad I have them. The Solo Violin Sonata is given a nicely judged performance and has very little competition on CD.

The Cello Concerto is given in the revised version, now more commonly called the Symphony-Concerto, Op. 125; Prokofiev had written it in the 1930s but when Rostropovich came to the fore in the late 1940s he worked with Prokofiev to revise it into the present form. For a time it was called the Sinfonia Concertante, and then, when revised further, the Symphony-Concerto. And of course Rostropovich owns the work, having championed it around the world. He recorded it in both of the revised forms, but those performances are a bit hard to find now. A pity. Still, the present recording is quite good. It features a cellist I'd not known of before, the 40ish Russian Alexander Ruben. Both the soloist and orchestra (the Polish National Radio Symphony under Antoni Wit, who accompany all the concerti in this set) are top-notch here. The same can be said for the Cello Concertino, Op. 132, which was unfinished at Prokofiev's death in 1953, but completed by Rostropovich and Dimitri Kabalevsky. This ravishing but rarely-heard work is given an outstanding performance. And the disc is filled out by the two delectable Pushkin Waltzes, Op. 120, which are Prokofiev in his most lovably ironic manner.

We come now to the seven symphonies. This is a very uneven set. They are all played by the National Symphony of Ukraine under their regular conductor, the American Theodore Kuchar. When I put on the First Symphony (the 'Classical') my heart fell; this is a dolorous account, taken at very slow tempi until, finally, in the last movement things start moving at a faster clip. The playing is OK, but the interpretation simply won't do. The Second is better but there are some balance problems; it sounds as if half the string section didn't show up the day it was recorded. The brutalist Third Symphony (developed from music taken from his opera 'The Fiery Angel') is given a decent performance. There are better single performances out there, though, including the one, surprisingly, by Ozawa (which is also included in his budget-priced but also variable complete set of symphonies). Symphony No. 4 is coupled with the music that spawned it, the ballet music for 'The Prodigal Son.' It is nice to hear the two pieces side by side; one can hear that Prokofiev took themes from the ballet and subjected them to symphonic development. Both performances here are quite nice. Symphony No. 5 is soft-edged and sounds as if it were recorded in a cathedral-like acoustic. That, coupled with the slight mushiness of the strings, makes this a gentle but not competitive performance. One misses the bite one hears in better performances. I happen to like a no-longer-available performance by the St. Louis SO under Slatkin, but there are others out there who feel the Järvi or the Previn are better than that one. The Fifth is coupled with 'The Year 1941' symphonic suite; this is simply not top-drawer Prokofiev although it has a few creepily effective moments. Symphony No. 6 is given a generally quite good performance. It begins with a scarily peremptory brass introduction (one imagines the NKVD at the door) before the ironically tender violin theme comes in. Nicely done. The Largo is ominously effective. But in the last movement, marked Vivace and taken a little too slowly for my taste, there is a weird drop-off in aural presence that I take to be a problem with either sound engineering or the pressing. However, the filler here, the Waltz Suite, surely one of Prokofiev's happiest collections (waltzes taken from 'Cinderella,' 'War and Peace,' and from a movie score) is possibly the best thing in the whole set. Or maybe it's just that I love these waltzes inordinately no matter how they're played! To complete the set, Symphony No. 7 (which is coupled with No. 3 on CD 2), written in Prokofiev's last year, returns to the simplicity of the Classical Symphony and is one of his most tuneful and least troubled. And it is given a very nicely judged performance here, relaxed and genial.

Scott Morrison

Music Review: