Following the eventual success of Romeo and Juliet in the Leningrad Kirov Ballet’s 1940 production, Prokofiev was asked to compose another ballet, with Cinderella as the subject. ‘It was important to me that Cinderella should be as danceable as possible, with a variety of dances that would weave themselves into the fabric of the story’, Prokofiev wrote. Cinderella was composed in the traditions of the old classical ballet, using dance forms of the eighteenth century and earlier, but in the composer’s own highly distinctive style. From the full score of some fifty numbers in three acts Prokofiev made three suites for concert performance. The selection on this CD is from the First and Third Suites, beginning with the Introduction to the ballet, which evokes Cinderella’s sadness and dreams of happiness, followed by the Quarrel between the Ugly Sisters as they bicker. The Pavane is danced by the courtiers in the ballroom scene while Cinderella and the Prince’s Adagio is the romantic highlight of the ballet.

Three of the Waltz Suite’s six waltzes also come from Cinderella. No. 2, ‘In the Palace’, is a beautiful ballroom waltz from the second act; No. 4 is the self-explanatory ‘End of the Fairy Tale’ and No. 6, ‘Happiness’, is based on a waltz theme associated with Cinderella during the ballet. Two of the others come from War and Peace: the ‘New Year’s Eve Ball’ (No. 5) is from the second scene and is danced by the elegant assembly in a St Petersburg mansion, while the first waltz, ‘Since we met’, found in scene four of War and Peace, had its origins even earlier in the incidental music written for the play of Eugene Onegin in 1936. The remaining ‘Mephisto Waltz’ is from Prokofiev’s music for the film Lermontov.