UTAH SYMPHONY’S PROKOFIEV

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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PROKOFIEV – Alexander Nevsky, Cantata for orchestra, chorus and mezzo-soprano Lieutenant Kijé Suite

Utah Symphony, Thierry Fischer, music director Alisa Kolosova, mezzo-soprano

REFERENCE RECORDINGS FR – 735SACD

Reference Recordings’ continues to live up to its ambitious mission through its Fresh! program, which includes promoting the work of American orchestras from cities all over the map, in this case the superb Utah Symphony.

Augmenting its chorus by the addition of two fine choral ensembles from the University of Utah, the orchestra, led by Thierry Fischer delivers a powerful performance of two Prokofiev compositions originally created for the screen.

The score of Alexander Nevsky, created for the classic 1938 Einsenstein film and later reshaped by Prokofiev into a dramatic cantata, here gets an enthralling performance by Maestro Thierry and his forces, with the exceptional mezzo-soprano Alisa Kolosova contributing her glistening sound and idiomatic handling of the Russian text.

The Suite from the music for the film Lieutenant Kijé provides a total contrast to the heroic sound of the Alexander Nevsky score, and Soundmirror‘s excellent engineering enhances the hybrid super audio sound of the neatly packaged album.

A caveat for the future: please add to the excellent liner notes by Paul Griffiths an English translation of the text of any composition with lyrics in a foreign language.

**** Outstanding

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”