When
Neeme Järvi and the Scottish National Orchestra's cycle of
Prokofiev's complete symphonies were first released in the mid-'80s, their competition was exceedingly slim. The stereo era had seen many cycles started -- most prominently,
Erich Leinsdorf's with the
Boston Symphony and
Eugene Ormandy's with the
Philadelphia -- but only three completed --
Walter Weller and the
London Symphony Orchestra,
Jean Martinon's with the ORTF Symphony Orchestra, and, best of all,
Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the
USSR Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. More importantly, since there had yet to be any other cycles released in the digital era,
Järvi had the opportunity to take the digital high ground for himself.
These are technically capable performances.
Järvi, a protégé of
Yevgeny Mravinsky and prodigious of memory, was a highly skilled conductor with a huge swathe of the repertoire at his fingertips, and the Scottish National is a well-trained and wholly professional orchestra with a bright sound and tight ensemble. Despite his pedigree, however,
Järvi seems to have no feel for
Prokofiev. His "Classical" Symphony is oddly ungainly, with little sense of the work's wit or exuberance. His Second, Third, and Fourth in its original version are minor exercises in hard-edged modernism, their edges sharp and their attacks fierce, but also lacking the innate lyricism that informs even
Prokofiev's most abrasive creations. His Fifth, Sixth, and Fourth in their revised versions are more brash and brutal than poetic and dramatic and thus miss the music's most salient features. And
Järvi's Seventh is neither nostalgic nor tragic, but merely superficial.
Recorded in slightly too forward early digital sound with a maximum of loud and a minimum of subtle,
Järvi and the Scottish National Orchestra's
Prokofiev cycle has been superceded by later cycles by
Valery Gergiev and the
London Symphony,
Theodore Kuchar and the
National Orchestra of the Ukraine, and
Dmitrij Kitajenko and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln. Anyone interested in these seminal modernist symphonies is urged to seek those sets out. This set is only for dedicated fans of the conductor and orchestra and for hardcore
Prokofiev aficionados who have to have everything.