Conductor Marin Alsop and her São Paulo Symphony Orchestra have been a catch for the budget label Naxos. Their Prokofiev cycle continues with Symphony No 3, in which the composer recycled music from his then-unperformed opera The Fiery Angel, and the Scythian Suite, a ballet commission for Diaghilev. The latter, given its ancient subject and primal rhythms, seems to have been written with an eye to the success of Stravinsky’s 1913 Rite of Spring. Those rhythms are punchily delivered. It is possible to imagine a more glowing string sound in the quieter passages – including Autumn, the pensive symphonic sketch included here between the symphony and the suite – but the orchestra impresses even in the recording’s slightly muddy acoustic. Alsop’s lack of sentimentality is a good thing, but this performance would have had more colour had she lingered over its corners a little more.
