It is always nice to have a beautiful painting on the cover of your classical record. That is of course why I bought this. A good example of judging a record by its cover. Or maybe it was because of the Dukas work, which I knew from a record owned by my parents.
I’m not really into symphonies. I think those of Beethoven and Mahler are good, but the rest basically sucks. Sure, there are some exceptions, as apparently is this one. It might have to do with this particular performance, because it is really sounding light as it should be. Cheerful as a Summer’s day, as it is on the cover.
The so called “classical” symphony by Prokofiev was written in the midst of the Russian (February) Revolution. Prokofiev studied in St. Petersburg, but escaped to the countryside for a little vacation. He wrote this symphony on the piano as an exercise. It is modeled after Mozarts light touch, hence my feeling of Summer in the music.
I couldn’t find the exact record of this on Spotify. The one in the link doesn’t have the Sorcerers apprentice. That one is made famous for its use in Disney’s Fantasia. It is a musical retelling of a Goethe poem about an apprentice that is trying magic and catastrophically failing. The living brooms in Disney’s film are fantastic.