It's just been crowned the BBC Music Magazine Awards' CD of the Year. But is Valery Gergiev's second complete recording of the 20th century's greatest ballet score, captured live at the Barbican for the LSO's own label, right at the top? In my Building a Library survey for BBC Radio 3, condensed in print for the BBCMM, I suggested it might be the best in state-of-the-art sound - but not the finest overall version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. That palm went to Rozhdestvensky's much more impeccably paced old Melodiya version, in mono and dating from 1959.
There's enough ravishingly beautiful playing on the current version to make it a worthy candidate among the options on which the public voted this year, and it was good enough to include in our Valentine's Day special. But even in the three nominations for the orchestral category, I'd have been more inclined to choose Vasily Petrenko's sensationally brisk interpretation of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony on the Naxos label.
What's the drawback here? Well, listen to rival versions and Gergiev's drama hangs fire a bit in the earlier fight scenes. So if I'd been on the panel this time, as I was back in 2008, I might have applied a bit more pressure on the final overall decision.
Still, there are some good choices for 2011, even if out of all the categories my money was only on one "winner": the ever-thoughtful Alexander Melnikov's two-CD Harmonia Mundi set of the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues.
