With Maazel's Decca Romeo and Juliet well established and Previn's EMI making a welcome appearance on CD, one rather wishes DG could have encouraged Ozawa to turn his attention to a Shostakovich ballet score instead (major works such as The age of gold and The limpid stream await their first complete recordings). Ozawa's Prokofiev adds little or nothing to that of his distinguished forerunners, yet the fact that it is fully their equal is already high praise, and there are reasons why any one of the three might be preferred.

The Cleveland Orchestra as AS has noted, are outstandingly virtuosic and the Decca recording was of demonstration quality for its time. In many respects the new Boston performance is similar; in each department both orchestras are that fraction superior to the LSO, and both recordings are a fraction clearer than EMI's, the new DG going in for less spotlighting of instruments than the Decca. However, with the Bostonians and the Clevelanders there is perhaps a slight danger that one ends up listening to the playing rather than the music; Previn, at slightly more relaxed tempos, has room for extra balletic pointing which is idiomatic and ear-catching, and which offers rich compensation for some slight deficiencies in execution (compare his "Juliet as a young girl" with Maazel's Juliet as a young greyhound).