Like, I suspect, a good many readers, I have long cherished Claudio Abbado’s 1966 Romeo and Juliet selection with the LSO for Decca (coupled with a suite from the much underrated Chout). Even more than 30 years ago (and how astonishingly vivid are Kenneth Wilkinson’s Kingsway Hall sonics!), the Italian maestro already displayed a distinguished grasp of this composer’s idiom, and there’s no gainsaying the exalted standards shown by his subsequent Prokofiev offerings: one readily thinks of, say, his 1977 Chicago SO Scythian Suite for DG (6/95) or 1986 COE Classical Symphony (4/91, also DG and, to my mind, perhaps the finest digital version of all).
That said, I’m not sure this new Romeo and Juliet concert sequence (compiled by Abbado from the three published suites as well as the ballet itself) quite hits the heights as often as I had been expecting, though it undoubtedly has its fair share of treasurable qualities. The playing of the BPO is, on the whole, outstandingly fine, and Abbado directs with his customary flair, imagination and sensitivity throughout. All the same, next to his earlier LSO version, “The Montagues and the Capulets” (Second Suite, No. 1) does lack that last ounce of swagger, while “The Quarrel” (No. 5 from the complete ballet) doesn’t quite distil the necessary menace (whereas, oddly enough, the ensuing fight music does). The “Dance with mandolins” (No. 25) has now acquired a whiff of brusqueness, and the “Dance of the young girls with the lilies” (No. 49), though fleeter than it was in 1966, is also somehow less alluringly chaste.
On the other hand, who could fail to thrill to the imposing BPO brass in the “Interlude” (No. 8)? And listen out for those entrancingly fluid violas from 2'24'' into “Juliet as a young girl” (Second Suite, No. 2). The hushed opening of “Romeo and Juliet” (First Suite, No. 6) really captures the imagination, as does the rolling swell of the central portion later on. The closing scenes are deeply expressive and very moving, though the tragic intensity of Myung-Whun Chung’s extraordinarily eloquent Amsterdam strings in Juliet’s funeral music has to be heard to be believed. DG’s live Philharmonie recording is ripe and immensely full-blooded, if neither as atmospheric nor as bloom-laden as one might wish. One other tiny observation: at 4'30'' into “Montagues and Capulets”, do my ears detect a discreet, stray side-drum beat?
To sum up, then, I find Abbado’s conducting easier to live with than Tilson Thomas’s dazzling but slightly self-conscious recent display. Ultimately, however, I still think I’d turn to Pesek and the RLPO’s marginally less refined but even more involving ‘scenes and highlights’ CD in preference to either. Ancerl’s legendary 1959 survey with the Czech PO remains essential listening, while Chung’s anthology is so rewarding I can’t help wishing he’d given us the whole ballet. Which reminds me: for about the same outlay as this DG newcomer, you could always invest in Previn’s likeable 1973 LSO account of the complete score on EMI Forte (7/96). Choices, choices ... .'