# Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible — recordings



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

What recordings of Prokofiev's music for _Ivan the Terrible_ do you like? I'm not necessarily looking for any particular arrangement of the score as I really don't know the merits of each one.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I have had both the Stasevich oratorio and Palmer concert versions and am unfamiliar with others. While the former is kinda OK, the speaker can be very annoying so I definitely prefer the Palmer. Here is what Christopher Palmer had to say about it

"...in 1962 Abram Stasevich (1906-1971), who had conducted Ivan for the film soundtrack, published his Ivan the Terrible 'oratorio' for speaker, soloists, chorus and orchestra which incorporated all the major musical sequences in the film plus a few that had been left out (notably 'Russian Sea'). It is in this form that the Ivan music has been known outside the film ever since, and in this form that critics have tended to find it long and diffuse. The main problem is the speaker, introduced by Stasevich primarily because he had been unwise enough to try and incorporate a large number of short fragmentary episodes, and had to find a way of stitching them together. Unfortunately once the speaker was in, he seemed to take over the entire work—much to its detriment in terms of narrative intelligibility and tightness of structure. My new 'performing version' eliminates the speaker and shorter sections (most of which are pastiche Russian-liturgical music of minimal Prokofievian interest). It also restores a number of episodes to their original format, most importantly the assassination of the Pretender in Part II—the climax of the film and one of the most electrifying moments in film music. While retaining Stasevich's make-up of most of the larger movements, I have reverted largely to the film's original sequence of musical events."

As to recordings of the Palmer, the Jarvi/Chandos is the only one that I know about.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

This is the one I have - I bought it blind because I wanted the complete music for both films but reviews have been positive, I think.










Prior to this I had Muti's highlights recording on EMI - I was happy enough with it but soon realised that I would want the whole soundtrack despite the repetition of some pieces. The Muti recording did its job but ended up being surplus to requirements. It's still worth considering because the music on this recording has been arranged to make it flow as a concert work, and what's been left out amounts to barely a quarter of the whole soundtrack.


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