Petrouchka

Burlesque in Four Scenes (complete recording). Cover Photo: Nijinsky as Petrouchka, Courtesy Roger Pryor Dodge Collection, Dance Section, New York Public Library Long Playing Living Presence - High Fidelity Margin Control [Liner] "Together with Stravinsky's 'Le Sacre du Printemps' (Mercury MG50030), Ravel's 'Daphnis and Chloë' (Mercury MG50046) and the Tchaikovsky dance masterpieces 'Swan Lake' (Mercury OL 3-102), 'Sleeping Beauty' (Mercury OL 3-103) and 'The Nutcracker' (Mercury OL 2-101), this disc of Stravinsky's Petrouchka takes its place among the series of definitive recorded documentations of ballet masterpieces undertaken by Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra for Mercury Living Presence. Recorded during March of 1955 in the Northrop Memorial Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus, this performance was taken with a single Telefunken microphone and with the orchestra seated in normal concert arrangement on the stage. A special study was made of the auditorium reverberation characteristic and its relationship to the illusion of presence in solo and ensemble texture before arriving at a decision regarding the final microphone placement and the stage area where the orchestra would be seated. In short, special pains were taken to achieve a maximum of tonal "warmth" with no loss in clarity of orchestral texture. We call attention also to the balance of the important solo piano part in the Russian Dance and Petrouchka's Room episodes midway in Side 1, as well as to the percussion and brass through the whole of In the Moor's Room (latter third of Side 1) and to the muted trumpets which signalize the return of Petrouchka's ghost at the conclusion of the ballet (end of Side 2)."