Act 1 brings relatively few surprises. Kitaienko directs efficiently enough, the orchestral playing is mostly excellent, though the Danish strings inevitably can't match the tonal depth and technical sophistication of their rivals in Cleveland or Boston. Kitaienko's ''Dance of the Knights'' is very broad and imposing in the manner favoured by home-grown interpreters, his ''Mercutio'' lacks flashing brilliance and wit. One has also heard more ardent presentations of the concluding ''Balcony Scene'' (where the horns are surely too reticent) but elsewhere growling detail from ominous-sounding lower winds and brass is effectively brought out (a feature, indeed, of the whole performance).
Things come to life with a vengeance, however for the divertissement which opens Act 2, and here is where eyebrows will most definitely be raised. Kitaienko launches into the ''Folk Dance'' (track 22) with almost manically hearty results, but far more disturbing to my mind are the extensive alterations to Prokofiev's scoring and dynamics in this number: coarse doublings and liberal helpings of extra percussion combine to produce results that are at once totally unidiomatic and (at times) almost comically crude. The ''Dance of the five couples'' (track 24) is similarly 'fleshed out': granted a trumpet replacing an oboe is not in itself an inappropriate touch, but tuttis remain over-robust. Alas, when the festivities resume after Scene 2, the emendations return once again to equally unsettling effect (disc 2, tracks 3 and 4). Mark Ermler (in his interview with David Nice on page 18 of the November 1994 issue) refers to the ''special orchestrations'' made by the chief percussionist at the Bolshoi (''When Prokofiev wrote that music, no one understood it... they wanted it to sound more like Minkus''): are these, I wonder, the versions employed by Kitaienko?
After all this, the performance never really seems to recover. Act 2's ensuing fight music somehow fails to catch fire, whilst the concluding funeral cortege is a disappointingly tame affair. At least Act 3 seems to emerge relatively unscathed from a textual point of view, though in the final number, ''At Juliet's bedside'' (track 23), I again noted some suspect-sounding woodwind doubling. The real damp squib comes in the shape of the Epilogue, where Kitaienko distils little of the tragic rage and poignant heartache that made Myung-Whun Chung's recent record of excerpts with the Royal Concertgebouw (DG, 10/94) so blisteringly memorable.
Warm-toned, typically vivid Chandos sound, if not quite as sumptuously detailed as Tryggvi Tryggvason's demonstration-worthy production on Ermler's otherwise disappointing Conifer set. Intrigued Prokofiev enthusiasts may care to sample the 'offending' tracks listed above for themselves. Overall, though, Kitaienko offers no serious challenge to the likes of Maazel, Ozawa and Gergiev in this magnificent score.'