More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

More of Our Favorite Orchestral Performances with Top Quality Sound

• Superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides of this reissue pressing – this copy was doing pretty much everything we wanted it to
• We would have loved to have a clean Vanguard Black Label pressing to offer you, but we haven’t seen a clean one in at least five years, maybe more
• Our favorite performance of Peter and the Wolf, with wonderful narration by no less than the incomparable film legend, Boris Karloff himself
• The Lt. Kije on side two is also excellent, close to our favorite, the Abbado on DG from 1978, which was recorded more than twenty years later
• Tubey Magically rich, yet realistic, which is of course an impossibility, but the Vanguard engineers manage to pull it off

This performance of Peter and the Wolf from 1957 is our single favorite recording of the work. This copy is a DEMO DISC, suitable for permanently destroying the rationale for every audiophile record ever made, simply on the grounds that none of them sound remotely as good as this one does.

The immediacy and unerringly realistic presentation of the solo instruments — bassoon, oboe, flute, etc. (each of which serves to represent a character in the story) — are so lifelike that I defy anyone to name a recording to challenge our assertion that this is positively As Good As It Gets.

And did I mention that it was made in 1957? You couldn’t even buy it on stereo disc back then!

This vintage Vanguard pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Peter and the Wolf Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1957
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We’re Listening For On Peter and the Wolf

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

In addition to the unerringly correct timbre of every instrument in the soundfield, the overall presentation is exceptionally spacious, open and three-dimensional, with an unusually extended top (the lack of which often badly hurts vintage pressings). The bottom goes very deep as well; watch for it when the bass drum comes into play. (Prokofiev sure loved his bass drums —- sometimes there are three —- and god bless him for it!)

Zero smear as well, something we would not expect from an all-tube 1957 recording, having played them by the hundreds in any given year. (We cannot date the Vanguard label accurately, and we think the cutting amps may be transistor, which usually works out to be the best of both worlds in our experience.)

A Unique Attribute

The narrator for this piece practically always sounds like he has been recorded in a sound booth, of varying quality to be sure. (Bernstein’s narration is one of the worst in this respect, sounding more like Aqualung than Lennie.)

Somehow Boris Karloff sounds like he is on stage with the orchestra here. He has either been recorded on stage, or precisely the right amount and precisely the right kind of reverb has been added to his voice to match perfectly the sound of the hall.

He sounds perfectly integrated with the orchestra, a feat none of the other recordings we played managed to accomplish, and at which most failed badly.

A Knockout

When you hear the bassoon or clarinet or oboe playing their solo parts on this record, you should be knocked out by how real those instruments sound. Man, this is analog at its best. You will have an impossible time finding this piece of music recorded, mastered and pressed with better sound than on this very side one.

That makes this pressing both a superb Demo Disc as well as a top quality Audio Test Disc.

Your Guard Against Phony Hi-Fi Sound

As you make changes to your setup, equipment, room, electrical system and who knows what else (we’re hoping you do; it can make all your Hot Stampers even hotter), this record will show you the progress you are making, as well as keep you on the straight and narrow. If you know anything about audio, you know that it’s easy to go off the rails. Happens to the best of us. That’s why it’s essential to have records like this one handy, to help you get back on the right path should some hi-fi-ish sounding something-or-other make itself appealing to you in an unguarded moment (to mix yet another metaphor).

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Peter and the Wolf

Side Two

Lt. Kije

Description by Alexander Carpenter

Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, for narrator and orchestra, was a commission from the Central Children’s Theatre in 1936. The composer himself wrote the text, which tells the story of a young boy who manages to capture a vicious wolf. The piece is remarkable for many reasons, but perhaps most notably for its didactic scoring, designed by Prokofiev to introduce children to the sounds of orchestral instruments.The instrumentation is also important for the narration, since each character in the story is represented by a different instrument: the bird by a flute, the duck by an oboe, the grandfather by a bassoon, the cat by a clarinet, the wolf by three horns, and Peter by the strings. The entire work was composed in a single week (in piano score), and the orchestration was completed less than two weeks later.

Prokofiev’s writing is intentionally direct and transparent, reflecting his desire to make the work enjoyable for children. His musical characterizations are broad and straightforward, from the delicate birdsong of the flute, to the thunderous kettledrums portraying the hunters’ rifle shots.

The work is in three sections, loosely following a kind of sonata form. The opening section introduces the main characters, preparing the audience for the action to come. The middle section–the “development”–contains the most exciting action, beginning with the appearance of the wolf, his eating of the duck, and his eventual capture by young Peter. The final scene acts as a recapitulation, as the principal characters return for a final parade; here, Peter’s opening theme returns transformed into a triumphant march.

Like most of Prokofiev’s music, Peter and the Wolf features adroit thematic integration and development. Peter’s theme, the dominant theme of the work, is stated at the beginning of the piece, and is then combined with other subordinate themes. This thematic blending is also closely tied to the dramatic action, underscoring developments in the story.

Harmonically, the piece begins and ends in C major, but contains many sudden harmonic shifts, another important aspect of Prokofiev’s style. Formally, though the piece does follow a loose sonata structure, it is by no means a case of textbook form; themes develop freely, harmonic direction is dictated largely by the action, and characterization assumes priority over any kind of academic musical construction.

Peter and the Wolf has long been a classic, loved by children for its vivid storytelling, and by adults for its gentle sense of humor and good-natured tunefulness. It was composed 22 years after a similar piece, The Ugly Duckling of 1914-1915, which also features humorous musical sketches of animals. It also bears comparison with Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which also seeks to acquaint children with the sounds of the symphony.

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Wikipedia on Peter and the Wolf

Peter and the Wolf is a composition written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936 in the USSR. It is a children’s story (with both music and text by Prokofiev), spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra.

Each character in the story has a particular instrument and a musical theme:

• Bird: flute
• Duck: oboe
• Cat: clarinet
• Grandfather: bassoon
• Wolf: French horns
• Hunters: woodwind theme, with gunshots on timpani and bass drum
• Peter: string instruments

Plot

Peter, a Young Pioneer, lives at his grandfather’s home in a forest clearing. One day, Peter goes out into the clearing, leaving the garden gate open, and the duck that lives in the yard takes the opportunity to go swimming in a pond nearby. The duck starts arguing with a little bird (“What kind of bird are you if you can’t fly?” – “What kind of bird are you if you can’t swim?”). Peter’s pet cat stalks them quietly, and the bird—warned by Peter—flies to safety in a tall tree while the duck swims to safety in the middle of the pond.Peter’s grandfather scolds Peter for being outside in the meadow alone (“Suppose a wolf came out of the forest?”), and, when Peter defies him, saying that “Boys like me are not afraid of wolves”, his grandfather takes him back into the house and locks the gate. Soon afterwards “a big, grey wolf” does indeed come out of the forest. The cat quickly climbs into a tree, but the duck, who has excitedly jumped out of the pond, is chased, overtaken and swallowed by the wolf.

Peter fetches a rope and climbs over the garden wall into the tree. He asks the bird to fly around the wolf’s head to distract it, while he lowers a noose and catches the wolf by its tail. The wolf struggles to get free, but Peter ties the rope to the tree and the noose only gets tighter.

Some hunters, who have been tracking the wolf, come out of the forest ready to shoot, but Peter gets them to help him take the wolf to a zoo in a victory parade (the piece was first performed for an audience of Young Pioneers during May Day celebrations) that includes himself, the bird, the hunters leading the wolf, the cat and grumpy grumbling Grandfather (“What if Peter hadn’t caught the wolf? What then?”)

In the story’s ending, the listener is told that “if you listen very carefully, you’d hear the duck quacking inside the wolf’s belly, because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive.”