Sir Charles Johnston's translation of the Pushkin original is in rhymed verses. For the most part the words are neatly and sometime superbly turned. Occasionally the rhyming scheme is too obviously laboured or one winces with a contrived consonance but overall this is beautiful and poignant. The music has the breath and pulse of romance indeed it races and strolls with delight, musing in ecstasy or threaded with bitterness for tragedy. Echoes of other scores including Romeo and Juliet are interleaved with other inspirations. It is wonderful to have this now at mid-price. However having this as a supplement to the Capriccio set where the text is spoken in Russian is best.

Timothy West is a wonderfully understated speaker who avoids the shoals of reading a rhymed scheme. Sam West is Onegin, Niamh Cusack as Tatyana and Dominic Mafham as Lensky. The silvery playing of the orchestra can best be heard in scene 4. They play under the voices but there is no sense of balance twiddling. The two components - narration and music are achieved with equipoise. Niamh sounds not quite young enough to be Tatyana but this is ripe Prokofiev - at his most lyrical; his most poignant. Rewards are yielded ceaselessly in this melodrama in sixteen scenes. One macabre example is the harpsichord's manic gavotte in tr. 12. If you love the emotionalism and melodic profile of Romeo and Juliet this is a score you must hear.

The full English spoken text is in the booklet. Single width double CD case - with 40pp booklet.

Not to be missed if you need the English version. The Russian somehow as an additional lissom reach and squeeze on the heart.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International