
Mr. Gorbachev introduces the disc, comments in between the two works, and concludes with an epilogue. Ms. Loren sweetly narrates Peter, and Mr. Clinton narrates Wolf Tracks. Together, they make a formidable team. Of course, despite the disc's well-meaning intent, it is probably for Peter and the Wolf that most people would buy it, and, fortunately, it is a decent account. Ms. Loren injects a note of warmth and humor into the piece, and Kent Nagano and the Russian National Orchestra play with conviction, grace, and wit. Never does Nagano let the work flag, and never do the characters it portrays seem anything but well defined and recognizable. Although I still have a special fondness for the old (1957) Vanguard recording of Peter, wonderfully narrated by Boris Karloff, it's not a bad account from this newcomer, if gentler and less menacing.

The 2003 audio from PentaTone reminds me of some of Telarc's albums, and the recording comes to us as a hybrid Super Audio CD (SACD), so it contains both a multichannel layer and an ordinary two-channel layer. One can play it on an SACD player or in stereo only on an ordinary CD player. As one might expect, it sounded fairly good in the two-channel SACD stereo mode to which I listened, the narration perhaps a little close but the orchestra opening up well behind it, both left-to-right and front-to-back. Frequency response, bass, transient impact, and such are what we have come to admire from SACD's, perhaps a tad warm, soft, and veiled but natural enough regardless.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:
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