Prokofiev: The Complete Symphonies

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: "The conductor Valery Gergiev has been engaged in a lifelong campaign to convince the world beyond Russia that Prokofiev was a major opera composer. … Mr. Gergiev has been an equally tireless champion of Prokofiev’s seven symphonies and is now waging that campaign at Avery Fisher Hall. … Mr. Gergiev’s stunning insights into these scores are enhanced by his long experience conducting Prokofiev’s operas and ballets. … In 2004, three years before he became the principal conductor of the London Symphony, Mr. Gergiev recorded the symphonies live in concert with the orchestra. On this tour to New York, the [London] players dispatched these scores with even greater fervor. … The seldom-heard Sixth Symphony, written in the immediate aftermath of World War II, finds the composer stubbornly rebellious in the face of the cultural crackdown by Soviet authorities. This somber, beleaguered piece — with its brutal outbursts and waves of spinning lyrical lines, at once aimless and inexorable — is considered a masterpiece by Prokofiev champions" (3/26/09).