Social history would be enriched by the experience of music. How did it feel at the time? Music provides, if not a way of knowing how it felt, at least some clues.

In November 1945 at the close of that terrible war, Prokofiev’s Cinderella premiered at the Bolshoi. During the war there had been some easing in the regimentation of art, but in this score Prokofiev stuck with the neo-classicism that had got him through thus far. At the end of Act 1, the ball scene, there is a waltz for the prince and Cinderella. For the Russian audience, the key references for a romantic waltz in a ballet would be Tchaikovsky – the Waltz of the Flowers, the waltz from Sleeping Beauty.

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Good stuff. But as the YouTube comments show, a long way from lush.

By 1945 the joint efforts of Prokofiev and Shostakovitch had established ‘wrong-note classicism’ as a Soviet establishment style. But in a piece like this, I’d argue, the style reverts to its 1920s origins and once again becomes satirical. In the context of the ballet as a whole there’s a further layer: Cinderella’s music when alone and dreaming is far more gratifying. But now here she is in the arms of power and the milk has curdled. Sneaky.

And yet . . . Perhaps these sour memories were as much romance as people could take.

There’s an obit here from someone else who feels embraced by the music-making. Some links, as well.  Sue Steward points to the autobiographical undertones of the songs the sisters wrote and the way women found their experiences reflected in them. In a quiet, slightly enigmatic way, the work is strongly feminist.  Spoilt males crop up a lot, especially on the album ‘Dancer with Bruised Knees’.  But the females are always complicit, the tone more wry than angry.

Kate McGarrigle, who died in January.

The McGarrigle Sisters had their breakthrough as performers with Kate and Anna McGarrigle. That’s still most people’s favourite album, certainly it’s mine.

Sentimental, adolescent, breathy, hoky, they say.  Sure, I say, but who cares.  Here’s ‘Gentle Annie’ from The McGarrigle Hour.

The sisters made very few rules for themselves: if they liked a song, they sang it, and if it didn’t happen to be a folksong, too bad.  So they sang all sorts of things, musical hall songs, French-Canadian popular songs, even cabaret, and perennials from writers like Stephen Foster: “Gentle Annie” dates from1856. They were raised singing some of this repertory, and they tried to recreate that family-round-the-piano atmosphere in their delivery and arrangements and in whole albums like The McGarrigle Hour. On that CD they’re joined by, amongst others their friends Linda Ronstadt and Emmy-Lou Harris, Kate’s children Martha and Rufus Wainwright and Kate’s ex-husband, Loudon Wainwright. So the songs of their childhood became the songs of their present and the family of origin became the family in the present, broken-but-intact.

Something lighter for the holidays. (Yes, still going here in the sleepy land of Oz.) Number one son is learning the old standard, so I passed on the story of Nicolai Malko’s bet with the young Shostakovitch: 100 roubles if he could orchestrate Tea for Two after listening to a recording just once. Here’s the result – it took Shostakovitch 45 minutes.

Naxos has a buoyant CD of this as part of a program of his early light music. A touch fulsome compared to Chailly’s but as usual, very good value.

Yes, it’s time again for the Wordability highlights of the year, that consoling list which doesn’t include anything too recent.  The music award this year has been easy: Rossini’s Il Viaggio di Reims on DGG, Claudio Abbado, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Prague Philharmonic Chorus and a cast like a fleet of Rolls-Royces.

Rossini wrote it for Paris to celebrate the coronation of Charles X in 1825. It was given four times, then withdrawn. For 150 years it was thought the complete score had been lost. (About half the music was re-purposed for  Le Comte Ory.) But three separate manuscript discoveries and some careful editing restored the whole. This 1985 recording, based on performances at Pesaro, is the work’s first. Charles X, by the way, was a reactionary so boneheaded that he brought on the 1830 revolution.

It’s first-rate Rossini. There are samples of the work on YouTube, from both the 1984 Pesaro performances, a 1992 performance again conducted by Abbado with much the same cast. and an Opus Arte video of another production.

Here’s the Pesaro version of the incomparable Sextet (the tenor who leads off is Franco Araiza).

This is the encore of the finale, this time from Berlin 1992. Watch ten virtuosi deliberately skating on thin ice.

And if you want more of Silvia McNair (who doesn’t?)

The estimable LindoroRossini is a Russian political scientist in love with bel canto singing. He has posted hundreds of excerpts on YouTube, each neatly annotated. The single best thing about the web is encountering these generous people. Go thence and enjoy.

No sooner had I decided that Pineapple Poll might stand in for the operas than LindoroRossini introduced me to the Charles Mackerras recordings with Welsh Opera (on Telarc). ArkivMusic has all five for US$70.