Arnold Katz - Ballet Suites

The earliest of the ballets featured here is Romeo and Juliet, commissioned in the mid-1930s, soon after Prokofiev returned to the USSR from self-imposed exile. Cinderella followed in the 1940s, with a score of rich and sophisticated music that rewards audiences. The Stone Flower was the last of Prokofiev's Soviet ballets (1948) and is on a folk tale from the Urals. It is perhaps the least familiar, but the score contains music of great beauty with soaring memorable tunes.