Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40765 in Music
• Released on: 2006-05-16
• Number of discs: 4

Amazon.com
It should come as no surprise that Gergiev is in his element in Prokofiev's symphonies. Whatever his failings in other repertory, he's always had a knack for visceral excitement in Russian music, sometimes at the expense of lyric or lighter moments. And so it is here. Gergiev is a bit heavy-handed in the popular Classical Symphony, Prokofiev's homage to Haydn and Mozart. But he delivers high-octane power in the three steel-age symphonies that follow (the set is especially notable for the inclusion of both versions of the Fourth). The popular Fifth is done with passion, as is the neglected and underrated Sixth. Most surprising is the Seventh, an outwardly amiable piece with a sometimes-sardonic subtext, which Gergiev delivers in a natural, well-balanced interpretation. The London Symphony is a big part of the set's success. It's one of the world's great orchestras, here captured live in concert, and far superior to Gergiev's home band, the Kirov Orchestra. Along with fine ensemble playing, the LSO scores in making Prokofiev's important wind writing and solos crisply vivid. Rivals include outstanding individual recordings like Ancerl's Fifth, Malko's First and Seventh, and Kuchar's budget set on Naxos, but this convenient, well-performed box set is a heavyweight contender. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews

The new world of classics?
Prokofiev: The Complete Symphonies I sat days trying to decide if I was going to buy this set. I was worried a little by Gramaphone's comments in the 2006-2007 Penguin Guide, and I often find they are much more `generous' in the Penguin yearbooks. I do not like to start with a whole set, perhaps just 2 of Symphonies 3,4,5,6 to see how I feel about them. These are indeed rapid run-througths. I believe there is no understandiong of Prokofiev at all. I have been listening to prokofiev for 45 years and the Bench marks included recordings primarily by Rozhdestvensky on Melodya and Leinsdorf's 2,3,4,5,6 with the BSO. I have some of the Mravinsky's too, but I was never that impressed. But also some of Ormandy and Karajan's performances and Weller too an inexpensive set on Decca and he understands this music.

If I were asked to describe Prokofiev's music I would start by saying it is always telling a story and it is full of contrasts. There is no story here in Gergiev's set, it is a bunch of sounds. Yes the rushed dramatic sections are exciting (but sometimes too rushed, I felt the LSO could not keep up and perhaps even lost concentration at times - this never happened with Leinsdorf, Rozhdestvensky or Weller!!!). But the tender sections were gone, the `other-worldliness' like in Symphony #3 was gone. It was played with fullness, slower, not gentler. There was some warmth but not much, and absolutely no tenderness which is such an integral part of Prokofiev's music, and I found that the landscape that the prior conductors had set was gone! Prokofiev's Symphonies are like Romeo and Juliet. There is the battle with Tybult which is like the rushing sections of the symphonies which are even grotesque at times, but then also there are the gentle and extremely tender dance of Juliet during the party in the beginning of the story where Neuryev(Romeo) sees Margo Fontayne (Juliet) if you have seen that wonderful British Ballet. So, in my opinion without contrasts this is not Prokofiev, this is a run through-poorly done. Unfortunately EMI only released Rozhdestvensky's symp 1-4 on a twofer and never the other 3. And only Leinsdorf's 1 & 5 came out on an RCA navigator which could have used the late Jack Pfeiffer to produce it well. A waste of money, indeed.

What r they talkin abt?
After going through all the the other reviews, I'm wondering if there are two different versions of this set. Only few others have mentioned about the bad recording quality. Well ... I must have the bad one. This set is of the absolute worst quality in my whole collection. It replaces the Bach Cello suites by Casals from 1930's recording.

The sound is muted. The sound stage is clumped in the middle. The strings are barely audible. I have a decent sound system and am very particular about the recording. I couldn't get through the 'Classical' sym, let alone the others.

Gergiev, LSO, Barbican Center, Philips: in case anyone wonders.

A worthy set, brilliantly recorded, with a significant shortcoming
I decided to buy Gergiev's intergral set of Prokofiev symphonies after seeing no less than 5 critics from Gramophone magazine recommend it either as a gift for themselves or someone else in that magazine's December issue. I have learned the English listen to, and respond to, classical music differently than Americans; I have also learned that any production receiving such a widespread rave has a lot going for it.

After listening repeatedly to these symphonies, I was consistently torn as to giving this set 4 stars or 3.5 stars. There clearly is a significant enough shortcoming in this set -- the inadequate performance of Symphony No. 6 -- to keep this from receiving top recommendation. I decided it was worth 4 stars because of the multitude of other good things going on inside this set.

The good things begin immediately with the Gergiev-LSO collaboartion of the Symphony No. 1 "Classical". I read someone that disliked this performance because it was too stodgy. I cannot attest to such a viewpoint; I believe the performance is a good one, perhaps not as good as Ormandy's rapid fire address on the old Sony CD, but lively throughout and performed in keeping with the classical spirit of the thing.

You learn first in this symphony that this set will be characterized by fine playing from the London Symphony Orchestra and oustanding recording technology that brings extra life to timpani and low brass, something that gives the LSO a darker, almost Russian, sound.

Perhaps my favorite and, ironically, most curious performances are those of the Symphonies 2, 3 and original version of 4. Never before had I understood the common threads that run through 2, 3 and the opening movement of 4 until I heard them under Gergiev's baton.

I always thought of 2 as dissonant modernism reminiscent of a period factory at work -- perhaps a score for the 1950s television program "Industry On Parade". Here, Gergiev presents some of those characteristics but with Boulez-like clarity and sharpness. He continues along similar lines through the more musically developed Symphony 3 -- which unfolds like a Bernard Herrmann film score and later as an egregiously militaristic episode -- and into the opening of the original version of Symphony 4.

It was instructive for me to be able to listen to one conductor's view of both the original 1930 version of Symphony 4 and the composer's revision from 1947. Both inhabit Prokofiev's world of ballet but the original continues the manic capacities first presented in Symphonies 2 and 3, while the revision -- even though still energetic and sometimes coming off as a locomotive -- leans far more on Prokofiev's "French Russian" values of ballet, tone painting and more subtle coloring. The more Shostakovich-like Symphony 7 also shares many of these attributes under Gergiev's direction.

I was not particularly enamored with the opening movement of the famous Symphony No. 5, one of the few mid-20th century symphonies to be instantly accepted by audiences worldwide. However, I was bowled over by the excitement and tension Gergiev builds in the Allegro Marcato, whose pace is absolutely riveting. Ther remainder of the performance was good. However, I found it deficient compared to another British performance from a similar era -- the 2002 concert reading by the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda, released by BBC Magazine.

I was all set to upgarde my score on this set until I listened, again, to Gergiev's rendition of the Symphony No. 6, which is unquestionably the composer's greatest achievement in the symphonic format. There is no other way to say it -- I was shattered by disappointment. How could Gergiev motor along through the symphonies doing so well, getting the London Symphony to sound so Russian, and capturing all the motion, pathos and dance Prokofiev put into these works ... and come up with such a clinker in the Symphony No. 6?

For anyone that isn't familiar with it, the Symphony No. 6 is widely considered Prokofiev's greatest symphonic masterpiece. Not as popular as No. 5, it nevertheless deals with many of the same issues -- war, remembrance and humanity as expressed by a Soviet composer in the era of World War II, a time when composers flourished in the USSR with the great patriotic war as their backdrop.

Yet, Gergiev's version of this masterpiece almost completely misses its point. The first movement generates all the angst, sadness and loss from the world war, which took 25 million Russians to their graves and incited some of the world's fiercest and most time-honored battles in Stalingrad and Leningrad. But I think Gergiev misses all this in the symphony, which sounds to me like a literal run-through. Neither does the optimism of future days Prokofiev wrote in the closing Vivace -- which Mravinsky captured so well in his many recordings -- come through with much vigor.

Following the masterly work of the conductor and orchestra -- not to mention sound technicians, who do another fabulous job with the Symphony 6 -- this performance let me down more than anything I have heard in months. Still, this is a worthy set, reliably traversed by conductor and orchestra, brilliantly recorded in stereo (not SACD), and with 16 pages of detailed notes and photos that help the listener better understand the composer, the history of the individual symphonies, and their place in the world. Ironically, one of the photos shows Mravinsky and the composer during the premiere of the 6th Symphony.

Decca clearly has a winner here and it's not hard to see why all those Gramophone critics promoted this package. If only that Symphony 6 had stood up to -- or even in the shadow of -- the great Mravinsky performances, this set had the potential to be a best in decade production. Still it's a very good one but it eludes magificence on the basis of its failure. Still recommended but don't throw out your favorites and do try to locate a copy of Mravinsky's 6th Symphony.