Sergei Prokofiev's Cinderella, Op. 87
For my birthday my parents gave me a stack of Sergei Prokofiev's ballets and operas, and I gotta say, when I started listening to Cinderella, Op. 87, I was immediately blown away. I can't say enough about the orchestration. You just must get a copy of it a hear for yourself. Finished in 1944, it's in three Acts comprised of 50 different pieces. My immediate feeling was that as a young lad, Danny Elfman locked himself in a room with this (and only this) recording and listened repeatedly for 20 years - and then emerged to form Oingo Boingo and write program music for things such as The Simpson's, Batman, and Nightmare Before Christmas - except that Prokofiev beat him by about 60 years. I loved it so much I bought both the orchestral score and the piano transcription, and I plan on stealing from it as soon as possible myself!