Sergey Prokofiev’s spectacular music for Ivan the Terrible is arguably one of his finest film scores. This classic recording conducted by Leonard Slatkin is filled with Prokofiev’s irrepressible energy, eloquent melodic power and colourful orchestration. Ivan, the first ‘Tsar of all the Russias’ is portrayed in the film not as the bloodthirsty tyrant his nickname suggests, but as a sorrowful and lonely man, betrayed by his friends, deprived of love, and determined at all costs to preserve a unified Russia under constant attack from abroad and treasonous intrigues at home.