Cinderella : Suite No.1 Op.107

Introduction

Cinderella goes to the ball

Cinderella's waltz

Midnight

When it was first performed, in Moscow in November 1945, Prokofiev’s Cinderella ballet was just the fairy-tale tonic the Russian public needed after the trials they had suffered in the war. Based on the familiar Charles Perrault version of the story, Cinderella is closer to the 19th century Russian tradition than his preceding ballet, Romeo and Juliet. It is less dramatic perhaps but no less tuneful, no less engagingly orchestrated and no less concerned with characterisation.

The first of the three orchestral suites extracted and freely adapted from the score begins, like the ballet, with a portrait of Cinderella herself. She is presented in two moods – resentfully unhappy at first in her enforced situation as a servant-girl but later, with a magical change of harmony, radiant in her dreams of a better future. Cinderella goes to the ball is based on bustling episode from the first act where she prepares to follow her ugly sisters to the ball. Cinderella’s Waltz comes partly from the exhilarating last number of the first act, as she anticipates the glamour of the ball, and partly from the second where it is briefly reprised before the dramatic intervention of Midnight. Cinderella has failed, in spite of an emphatic warning from her Fairy Godmother, to leave the ball by midnight, the fateful hour violently signalled here by screeching woodwind, loud tick-tocks on woodblock, grotesque brass interjections and striking bells. With an impassioned recall of one of her melodies from the first act Cinderella leaves the ball – in her hurry leaving behind, as we all know, one of her magic slippers.

Introduction

Quarrel

Fairy Godmother and Winter Fairy

Cinderella's waltz

Midnight

When it was first performed, in Moscow in November 1945, Prokofiev’s Cinderella was just the fairy-tale tonic the Russian public needed after the trials they had suffered in the war. Based on the familiar Charles Perrault version of the story, it is less dramatic perhaps than Prokofiev’s preceding ballet Romeo and Juliet but no less tuneful, no less engagingly orchestrated and no less concerned with characterisation. The first of the three orchestral suites extracted and freely adapted from the score begins, like the ballet, with a portrait of Cinderella herself. She is presented in two moods – resentfully unhappy at first in her enforced situation as a servant-girl but later, with a magical change of harmony, radiant in her dreams of a better future. Prominent among her problems are, of course, her two ugly stepsisters, Skinny and Dumpy, who in the Quarrel get involved in a bad-tempered dispute as to which one of them will wear their favourite shawl at the Prince’s ball. The next extract introduces Cinderella’s ally, the Fairy Godmother who, after the initial entry of the Winter Fairy represented by an exotically undulating melody on clarinet, presents her with the magic slippers and sends her to the ball. Cinderella’s Waltz comes partly from the exhilarating last number of the first act, as our heroine anticipates the glamour of the ball, and partly from the second act where it is briefly reprised before the dramatic intervention of Midnight. Cinderella has failed, in spite of an emphatic warning from her Fairy Godmother, to leave the ball by midnight, the fateful hour violently signalled here by screeching woodwind, loud tick-tocks on woodblock, grotesque brass interjections and striking bells. With an impassioned recall of one of her melodies from the first act Cinderella leaves the ball – in her hurry leaving behind, as we all know, one of her magic slippers.

Gerald Larner © 2010

Introduction

Pas du châle (Shawl Dance)

Quarrel

Fairy Godmother and Winter Fairy

Mazurka

Cinderella goes to the ball

Cinderella's waltz

Midnight

When it was first performed, in Moscow in November 1945, Prokofiev’s Cinderella ballet was just the fairy-tale tonic the Russian public needed after the trials they had suffered in the war. He had actually started work on it, to a commission from the Kirov in Leningrad, in 1941. But the surprise invasion of Russia by Germany, in defiance of the non-aggresison pact between the two countries, put him into a quite different frame of mind. He turned his attention to composing an opera on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which was clearly more relevant to the situation, and he returned to Cinderella only in 1943. But by then the Kirov company had been evacuated to Perm, where the theatre was too small for such an ambitious project, and it had to wait for its first performance, at the Bolshoi rather than the Kirov, until November 1945. It was an immediate success.

Based on the familiar Charles Perrault version of the story, Cinderella is closer to the 19th century Russian tradition than his preceding ballet, Romeo and Juliet. It is less dramatic perhaps but no less tuneful, no less engagingly orchestrated and no less concerned with characterisation. The first of the three orchestral suites extracted and freely adapted from the score begins, like the ballet, with a portrait of Cinderella herself. She is presented in two moods – resentfully unhappy at first in her enforced situation as a servant-girl but later, with a magical change of harmony, radiant in her dreams of a better future. Prominent among her problems are, of course, her two ugly stepsisters, Skinny and Dumpy. In the next two movements of the suite, Pas du châle and Quarrel, the sisters are wittily caricatured in unflattering instrumental colours and inelegant rhythms embroidering a shawl and then, as the rhythms turn vicious, getting involved in an ugly dispute as to which one of them will wear it at the Prince’s ball. The next extract introduces Cinderella’s ally, the Fairy Godmother who, after the initial entry of the Winter Fairy represented by an exotically undulating melody on clarinet, presents her with the magic slippers and sends her to the ball.

Two of the remaining four movements of the suite are taken from the second act of the ballet, set at the much-anticipated ball in the palace, and two revert to the first. The last of several dances performed by courtiers at the ball before the entry of the Prince is a boisterous Mazurka, which is rather different here from the original ballet version and is followed by the bustling episode from the first act where Cinderella prepares to follow her sisters to the ball. Cinderella’s Waltz comes partly from the exhilarating last number of the first act, as she anticipates the glamour of the ball, and partly from the second where it is briefly reprised before the dramatic intervention of Midnight. Cinderella has failed, in spite of an emphatic warning from her Fairy Godmother, to leave the ball by midnight, the fateful hour violently signalled here by screeching woodwind, loud tick-tocks on woodblock, grotesque brass interjections and striking bells. With an impassioned recall of one of her melodies from the first act Cinderella leaves the ball – in her hurry leaving behind, as we all know, one of her magic slippers.

Gerald Larner © 2010