While much of Europe was convulsed by the Great War, Prokofiev was composing a ballet to a grotesquely comic folk-tale of a buffoon who outwits seven other buffoons. No doubt there is somewhere, or has been, a commentator or even a chore-ographer working on the vulgar idea of an allegorical connection between the music and its times. But so far as anyone can tell, Prokofiev’s own motivation seems to have been simply his childlike affection for the story and the tradition within which it falls, plus the urge to emulate the success of Stravinsky’s Petrushka (in which project he signally failed). There is no point in pretending that the score adds up to more than the sum of its splintery parts. Nevertheless, anyone remotely attuned to Prokofiev will lap up its 55 minutes of engaging musical daftness – as Shostakovich for one must have done, to judge from the echoes of it in his own first ballet, The Golden Age.

Continuing his invaluable series of Prokofiev ballet recordings, Michail Jurowski persuades his Cologne players to enter into the spirit of the game, and they respond commendably to Prokofiev’s pantomimic resourcefulness. The only previous complete recording I have come across is Rozhdestvensky’s with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra, once available on the Olympia label and currently on Consonance. This is even more sharply characterised, but marred by some sour woodwind and not as naturally recorded.

The CPO booklet-note would have been better without its attempts at light-heartedness, but it at least gives us a detailed synopsis, keyed to timings within each track. Without that, it would be hard to understand the twists and turns of Prokofiev’s invention.