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I should have read a little more about the subject. I should have compared the full orchestral scores of the whole ballet and the suites. And above all, I should have trusted my ears.
Although I've seen Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet staged once (in a production by a choreographer who cast himself as Mercutio and seemed to think that was the title of the show, like Ben Affleck's Mercutio-playing actor in Shakespeare in Love), I'm used to the music from the suites. So when I was to review MTT and the SFS playing excerpts from the ballet, not the suites, I checked out a library CD of Gergiev and the Kirov playing the entire ballet score, to familiarize myself with the differences. The structural ones I was expecting, but I also heard some small differences in the scoring. There was nothing about this in the liner notes or in the program notes at the concert, and I didn't hear those differences in the concert, so I shrugged it off and ignored it. Maybe it was the recording engineers or the orchestra or the conductor.
Come the next week's concert, and in the program notes for an entirely different work, I found mention that Prokofiev "coarsen[ed] the orchestration of Romeo and Juliet at the insistence" of the original ballet company, but he left the suites alone.
A little light went on in my head, and I itched until I could get back home and write a corrective letter (bottom of the page) to my editors.
Although I've seen Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet staged once (in a production by a choreographer who cast himself as Mercutio and seemed to think that was the title of the show, like Ben Affleck's Mercutio-playing actor in Shakespeare in Love), I'm used to the music from the suites. So when I was to review MTT and the SFS playing excerpts from the ballet, not the suites, I checked out a library CD of Gergiev and the Kirov playing the entire ballet score, to familiarize myself with the differences. The structural ones I was expecting, but I also heard some small differences in the scoring. There was nothing about this in the liner notes or in the program notes at the concert, and I didn't hear those differences in the concert, so I shrugged it off and ignored it. Maybe it was the recording engineers or the orchestra or the conductor.
Come the next week's concert, and in the program notes for an entirely different work, I found mention that Prokofiev "coarsen[ed] the orchestration of Romeo and Juliet at the insistence" of the original ballet company, but he left the suites alone.
A little light went on in my head, and I itched until I could get back home and write a corrective letter (bottom of the page) to my editors.
