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Dresden Philharmonie Orchestra Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953) Excerpts from CinderelLa Suite First Suite: Introduction Third Suite: Third movement ‘The three oranges' First Suite: Sixth movement ‘Cinderella goes to the ball' First Suite: Seventh movement ‘Cinderella’s Waltz’ First Suite: Third movement ‘Quarrei’ Prokofiev started composing the music for Cinderella in 1941. He wanted to write a battet that was 'as danceable as possible’, with individual dance numbers ‘that woutd emerge naturatty from the story line, that woutd be varied, that woutd attow the dancers to do enough dancing and to exhibit their technique’. One reason for this set of objectives was probably to avoid the difficulties that he had experienced with the Kirov Battet in 1940, when the supposedly ‘undanceable’ score of Romeo and /uliet had been simplified against his wishes. Thus Cinderella makes much greater use than Romeo and /uliet ot the forms of nineteenth-century Russian battet music. Soviet dancers and choreographers were trained in this tradition, and fett most comfortabte working within it. Prokofiev’s models for Cinderella were the batlets of Tchaikovsky. The score is fitted therefore with ballet numbers: several 'pas de deux’, many waltzes, a pavane, a bourree and a mazurka, for instance. Offen the dance form has little direct connection with the psychological or dramatic action. Cinderella is the most traditional ballet that Prokofiev wrote, with little evidence of the younger Prokofiev who so fiercely defended dramatic truth. The scenario for the ballet was taken direetly from probably the most famous Version of the fairy-tale, by Charles Perraut and published in 1697, and later reworked by the Brothers Grimm. The setting is the eighteenth Century, Prokofiev’s favourite era, and one that gave him the opportunity to introduce numerous courtly dances. Although the scenario was traditional, Prokofiev did strengthen the humorous and grotesque elements. The prime targets for this are Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters. The positive characters in the story (Cinderella, her father, the Prince and the Fairy Godmother) are treated with sympathetic lyricism. Prokofiev wrote that he ‘wanted to convey the poetic love between Cinderella and the Prince - the birth and flowering of that feeling, the obstacles thrown in its path, the realization of the dream’. A further dimension to the score was the music for the fantastic characters, such as for the four fairies representing the four seasons, the music for the Fairy Godmother, and the fantastic scene which takes place immediately after the clock strikes midnight, with mischievous gnomes, representing the hours of the clock, scampering around the stage. The outbreak of hostilities between Germany and Russia temporarily halted work on the score for the ballet after Prokofiev had sketched two of its three acts. In its place Prokofiev tumed to composing his opera War and Peace. He picked up the threads in late 1942, with the intention of Cinderella being staged by the Kirov Theatre in the city of Perm, to which the Company had been evacuated, towards the end of 1943. In fact the premiere was to take place later than planned and after the war had ended in 1945, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Both the populär and critical responses then were extremely positive. Writing in the communist party newspaper Pravda, fellow composer Dmitri Shostakovich praised it as ‘worthy of the glorious traditions of Russian ballet’ and ‘a Step forward in the art’. Cinderella was staged during the following spring of 1946 by the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, where it was similarly well received. Subsequently it was produced in cities throughout the Soviet Union, Europe and America. After Romeo and /uliet it is Prokofiev’s most frequently performed ballet. During the winter of 1945 and 1946, Prokofiev created three Symphonie suites from Cinderella. basing them on his earlier piano transcriptions of movements from the ballet score. He wrote that ‘these suites are not simply a collection of numbers mechanically taken out of the ballet. Much has been reworked and put into more Symphonie form.’ Together the three suites include almost all the music that Prokofiev composed for the ballet. They were performed extensively during the years following the initial performances of the ballet, and have retained a place within the concert repertoire subsequently. Each suite is remarkably successful in conjuring up the sense of fantasy that Prokofiev saw in the score, and presenting this with a true Symphonie sweep, as the composer originally intended. At tonight’s concert we hear a selection of movements from the First and Third Suites, which contain some of the score’s most glorious music. © David Patmore
