Berlin Radio Orchestra / Maazel - Firebird / Romeo & Juliet - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Based on Shakespeare's most famous romantic play, Prokofiev's realization of Romeo and Juliet as a full-length narrative ballet was audacious in it's day. It was written during a period of artistic turmoil under a Soviet regime in which arguments raged over such fundamental aspects as the choice between a happy or tragic ending. Famous movements such as the 'Dance of the Knights' have helped maintain Romeo and Juliet as Prokofiev's best-loved stage work. Marin Alsop's acclaimed cycle of Prokofiev's Symphonies has been described as Inchan outstanding achievementInch by BBC Music Magazine. Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene who passionately believes that Inchmusic has the power to change lives.Inch She is recognized across the world for her innovative programming and for her deep commitment to education and the development of audiences of all ages.

Sir Georg Solti was a frequent guest conductor with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Born in Hungary in 1912, he played a decisive role in rebuilding the Bavarian National Theatre after the war. From the 1960s onwards, he was considered one of the world's leading conductors alongside Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan. Georg Solti returned to Munich once more for a special concert on February 10, 1984, with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. Aged 71 and at the height of his career, he conducted excerpts from Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. Works by these two Russian composers, as well as Bruckner and Mahler, suited him particularly well, as they sounded musically spirited and exceptionally transparent.Prokofiev's three-act ballet Romeo and Juliet was written in 1935 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, but it's premiere did not take place until 1938, in Brno in the Czech Republic. At the special concert in Munich in 1984 with Georg Solti, fifteen numbers from the ballet music were performed in chronological order.Pyotr Tchaikovsky dedicated his Fourth Symphony - composed in 1877/78 at the same time as his opera Eugene Onegin - to his patron Nadezhda von Meck. Despite their lengthy correspondence, they never actually met. In a letter to her dated March 1878, Tchaikovsky outlined the feelings he had experienced while composing his Fourth Symphony, though no specific programme can be discerned from them.

Of all Berlioz's Shakespeare-inspired works, Romeo et Juliette is unquestionably his masterpiece. It is also cast in an innovative new form, a kind of 'super-symphony' that incorporates elements of symphony, opera and oratorio. Berlioz composed no singing roles for the central characters, but allowed others to comment or narrate, giving latitude to incarnate the lovers in a musical language of extraordinary delicacy and passion. The vivid 'Ball Scene' and 'Romeo at the Capulet tomb' are intensely dramatic but the heart of the work is the 'Love Scene,' a long symphonic poem which Richard Wagner called 'the melody of the 19th century.'