Prokofiev’s “Dance of the Knights” (a.k.a. Montagues & Capulets) has marched from the 1935 ballet Romeo and Juliet to football stadium playlists and even the boardroom drama of the BBC’s The Apprentice. Paul Kucharski’s wind-band version lets the orchestra unleash all that iron-clad menace with antiphonal brass, piercing woodwinds and (if we dare) a subterranean organ pedal that will rattle the rib-cage. Prokofiev’s Battlefield BalletSergei Prokofiev sketched Romeo and Juliet in 1935, then mined the score for three orchestral suites so concert halls could savour the drama without dancers. The second suite’s opening march, “Dance of the Knights,” pits a granite C-minor ostinato against snarling dissonances. British audiences know it as the theme to The Apprentice, where its implacable tread underscores every boardroom showdown. Football clubs from Sunderland to Juventus blast it as players stride onto the pitch, and it has even crept onto lists of popular funeral music for die-hard fans. Kucharski’s wind transcription preserves the brutal low-brass ostinato, doubles the shrieking woodwind cluster at bar 37, and offers an optional 16-foot organ pedal to add seismic rumble. Piccolo and flute scream in stacked fifths, while clarinets trill under a canopy of muted trumpets, making the air sizzle like steel clashing in Verona’s torch-lit square. At the sudden pianissimo bridge, upper reeds hold icy chords above hushed cymbal rolls—the musical equivalent of daggers drawn but not yet thrown. We invite you to stand amid the feud—no sword required, just a beating heart ready for the clash
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