Complete Symphonies : Kitayenko / Cologne Gurzenich Orchestra (5CD)

PROKOFFIEV COMPLETE SYMPHONIES
DMITRIJ KITAJENKO

CD1:
Symphony No 1 in D major, Op 25 ‘Classical’
Symphony No 7 in C-sharp minor, Op 131
CD2:
Symphony No 2 in D minor, Op 40
Symphony No 3 in C minor, Op 44
CD3:
Symphony No 4 in C major, Op 47 (Original 1930 version)
Symphony No 4, Op 112 (Revised 1947 version)
CD4:
Symphony No 5 in B-flat major, Op 100
CD5:
Symphony No 6 in E-flat minor, Op 111

Gürzenich-Orchester Köln
DMITRIJ KITAJENKO

“For me, Prokofiev is the most Russian of all composers: he is a part of Russia itself – with his heart, his mind and his soul. He comes from a well-to-do family in the Ukraine, from a village called Sonzovka – Village of the Sun. And indeed: he was born where the sun rules. And became a sunny composer.” Dmitrij Kitajenko

Following the successful publication of all of Shostakovich’s symphonies on CD, Dmitrij Kitajenko – once again in collaboration with the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln – completed the recording of all of Sergey Prokofiev’s seven symphonies in December 2007. Once again, he was involved in a very challenging project, both in terms of time and level of technical difficulty, one that demanded huge efforts and potential from the orchestra musicians, the conductor and the entire team of logistical organisers alike.

“I can remember that recording with the highly renowned Gürzenich-Orchester in Cologne very well. For years, we have enjoyed a particularly good personal relationship together. On the evening before, we’d had a very exhausting concert, and we were all tired. But on the following day we were due to record Prokofiev’s symphony no. 1. And so we all witnessed the power of Prokofiev’s music: within just a few minutes, our mood improved and all tiredness disappeared completely. Those musical vibrations had transferred their energy to us.”

As for the Shostakovich cycle, the symphonies arranged for a larger orchestra were recorded live during concerts, and thus the Kölnische Rundschau printed the following review of the performance of the symphony no. 6:
“This symphony written in 1947 is generally regarded as unwieldy; an ungrateful task for musicians as well as the audience, and it is therefore rarely played in concert halls. Kitajenko, however, manages to decipher the score by unfolding it as a tragic, psychological chain of events, instead of as a revoltingly noisy scenario from Stalin’s era. Melodious string passages repeatedly occur in an almost elegiac manner. Flutes and horns unearth unexpected and surprising elements of beauty, as it were – even though this was only possible because the musicians summoned up all possible purity of sound and musical ardour.”

Prokofiev’s symphonies could not be more varied. Similarly to Shostakovich’s oeuvre, they were written at different times throughout the composer’s life and each one individually holds up a mirror to current contemporary Russian society. The pressure of political dictatorship and forced submission to merciless censorship gave rise to an era which still makes us shiver when we proceed to analyse the music in detail. On the other hand, the huge energy, the hopes and desires, emotional and social messages conveyed between the lines could not be vanquished even by dictators and censors. Dmitrij Kitajenko, himself a child of the late Russian-socialist period, knows exactly how to decrypt the text and shows us how in every single phase of this new complete recording.