Document

  1996
    November 1996
        Orchestral
                Kabalevsky Suites.

Kabalevsky [Suite] Suites – Colas Breugnon, Op. 24a; The Comedians, Op. 26; Romeo and Juliet, Op. 56. Moscow Symphony Orchestra / Vasily Jelvakov.

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 553411 (69 minutes: DDD).

Kabalevsky’s light touch is well displayed in these three orchestral suites, one from the opera Colas Breugnon – whose overture, a little tamely delivered here, remains his most popular piece – the others from incidental music. The Comedians was a play written for a children’s theatre in 1939 by the Jewish playwright Mark Daniel on the unlikely subject of Johannes Gutenberg (originally entitled The Inventor and the Actor). The lively “Galop” has been another of Kabalevsky’s successes.

His Shakespeare scores test his range a good deal further – they include Measure for Measure – and in the music for Romeo and Juliet he succeeds better with the sprightlier pieces than in the love music or death music for the star-crossed lovers. There is a sombre movement for Friar Laurence that has a half-allusion to Tchaikovsky’s depiction of him at the start of his Overture. But without knowing more of the nature of the production, written in 1956 for the theatre named in honour of one of Russia’s pioneering twentieth-century theatrical experimenters, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, or whether there is more music which did not fit into a suite, it is unfair to question the balance of moods. What we have here is some agreeable light music, agreeably played.

JW



		Kabalevsky’s light touch is well displayed in these three orchestral suites, one from the opera Colas Breugnon – whose overture, a little tamely delivered here, remains his most popular piece – the others from incidental music. The Comedians was a play written for a children’s theatre in 1939 by the Jewish playwright Mark Daniel on the unlikely subject of Johannes Gutenberg (originally entitled The Inventor and the Actor). The lively “Galop” has been another of Kabalevsky’s successes.



		His Shakespeare scores test his range a good deal further – they include Measure for Measure – and in the music for Romeo and Juliet he succeeds better with the sprightlier pieces than in the love music or death music for the star-crossed lovers. There is a sombre movement for Friar Laurence that has a half-allusion to Tchaikovsky’s depiction of him at the start of his Overture. But without knowing more of the nature of the production, written in 1956 for the theatre named in honour of one of Russia’s pioneering twentieth-century theatrical experimenters, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, or whether there is more music which did not fit into a suite, it is unfair to question the balance of moods. What we have here is some agreeable light music, agreeably played.