Prokofiev: Cinderella, Op. 87

In November 1945, the premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s new ballet “Cinderella” took place at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow: It was an immediate success, repeated in Leningrad not long after. After The Fool and Love for Three Oranges, Prokofiev had once again returned to the fairy tale – and once again he had succeeded in creating a great work that offered even the most dogmatic heads of the Kremlin no grounds for protest. On the contrary: the fate of the exploited girl could be excellently exploited to “prove” the eternal, historical longing of all peoples for the blessings of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The only fatal thing is that the “naive” Prokofiev, of all people, who believed so much in this and other fairy tales, relegated all political readings to the realm of fable with his article written at the time of the premiere: “What I wanted to set to music above all is the romantic love of Cinderella and the prince in the tradition of the old classical ballet, with pas de deux, gavotte, waltzes, bourrée, mazurka and gallop.” It is certainly Prokofiev’s most sweeping, dance-like ballet, and it is hard to understand why it is still overshadowed by Romeo and Juliet. We now want to remedy this with a brilliant new recording with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne under the proven Prokofiev specialist Mikhail Jurowski