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Review by David Saemann for Prokofiev: Songs and Romances
Rating:
I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, not least because it cost me $4. FYE has been discounting it substantially. First of all, be warned: There is some hardcore socialist realism contained in this set. You will have to decide if fine music is worth the price of listening to texts extolling the greatness of Stalin. There is even a lullaby where a mother tells her child that their warmth and nutrition come from Stalin. There also are numerous exhortations to the valor of the Red Army. There is a song praising the Hitler-Stalin pact as a repatriation of people enslaved by a foreign country, i.e. Poland. One of the most repulsive songs is entitled “Fritz.” It tells the story of a German soldier, slightly wounded at the Russian front, who goes home to find someone else “making babies” with his girlfriend, “babies” whom he can be proud of because they all will become soldiers, too. You wonder how Prokofiev could set all this stuff, and well, too! Yes, there are great songs here written to great poetry, by Akhmatova and others. The performances are uniformly fine, even though the only singer with an international reputation is the bass, who has the least to do. Yuri Serov has beautiful command of Prokofiev’s piano writing, and his collaborative ability counts for much of the joy of this collection. It is well engineered, too. None of the performers seem the slightest put off by some of the drivel they happen to sing. You wonder how they would feel if the name Stalin were replaced by Hitler’s. In any event, this collection is musically prime Prokofiev, and you will have to decide if it’s worth letting some of its filth into your home.