Should we remember Prokofiev for his failures? Like Shostakovich’s Song of the Forests, with which it was paired some years ago by Yuri Temirkanov (RCA, 9/99), On Guard for Peace is a product of the darkest days of Stalinist repression and hence complicit with what David Fanning termed “mass ideological brainwashing”. While the revisionist tendency represented by David Nice’s booklet-note seeks to detect “between-the-lines warnings” even here, this may perhaps strike you as wishful thinking. Under a cloud post-1948, his first wife interned and his income drastically cut, Prokofiev had no choice but to supply the sort of cantata the regime required, having gone out of his way to nail down an ideologically foolproof text. There are cute kids, emblematic doves and big tunes. Recurring references to the supervisory role of the Leader and Teacher are both explicit and chilling.

Neeme Järvi has a background in the old Soviet bloc and a long track record in conducting Prokofiev’s music for the Chandos label. His approach is urgent and forthright, rejecting the subtler inflexions of Temirkanov’s reading. Bold sonics make his Scottish forces sound as if they too might hail from St Petersburg and the swimming-pool resonance swallows up the flaws. Soloist Irina Tchistjakova, a youngish mezzo of slightly alarming old-school vibrancy, also narrates. Under Temirkanov the ninth movement “conversation on the airwaves” is recited, more threateningly, by a man.

The unexpected pairing is a Royal Ballet commission perpetrated by Michael Berkeley, chiefly from material Prokofiev had intended to underscore a projected Mikhail Romm film of The Queen of Spades. Berkeley’s treatment seems diffuse, probably because the best bits had already been recycled by Prokofiev himself, notably in the slow movement of the Fifth Symphony. Prokofiev fanciers will wonder why an actual ballet score such as On the Dnieper (similarly plotted) or a finished orchestral piece like the Russian Overture could not have been pressed into service instead.