E-Mail This Article to a Friend Superb Sergei Boston Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet CD BY JEFFREY GANTZ

The regular season may have ended for Boston Ballet (the company will be throwing in an end-of-the-summer bonus when it does George Balanchine’s Duo Concertant and Who Cares?, Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, and Jorma Elo’s Plan to B August 25 through 29 at Jacob’s Pillow), but you still can hear the Boston Ballet Orchestra on a just-released CD of highlights from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, the ballet with which the company finished off its 2002-2003 season. It’s the orchestra’s third release, following CDs of highlights from The Nutcracker in 1995 and The Sleeping Beauty in 2001.

The BSO and the Pops aside, it’s not unusual for local classical outfits to make a splash on the international recording scene, as witness the success of the Boston Philharmonic under Benjamin Zander, Boston Baroque under Martin Pearlman, and Emmanuel Music under Craig Smith. The Boston Ballet Orchestra is nonetheless a minnow swimming among the world’s great ensembles, and the company hasn’t had the budget to record more than highlights. For Romeo and Juliet, the complete recordings include André Previn and the London Symphony (EMI), Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra (Decca), Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Royal Philharmonic (Decca), Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra (Philips), and Seiji Ozawa and the BSO (Deutsche Grammophon). There are also highlight discs available by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon) and Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (RCA).

And yet the new release is competitive. Boston Ballet musical director Jonathan McPhee has made a generous selection, almost 80 minutes, from the ballet, which runs just under two and a half hours in Prokofiev’s score but is usually trimmed to a little over two hours in performance; and he’s preserved the story line, sacrificing the divertissements and character dances. I missed the "Arrival of the Guests" from the first act (the "Madrigal" and the "Gavotte" are also gone) and the "Aubade" and "Dance of the Girls with Lilies" from the third, but the only selection I’d have opted to sacrifice in return is the first-act "Masks." And the playing makes up in character for whatever it lacks in refinement. The opening measures of the Introduction convey Prokofiev’s idiosyncratic blend of sour and romantic, with a little sigh in the violins at 0:52 and again at 1:09. The recording, which was made last September at Jordan Hall, leaves lots of air around the instruments without depriving them of presence, and McPhee’s chamber-like direction turns these instruments into dancers; you can practically see the ballet as you listen. Tempos are moderate, with poetry and anguish that doesn’t descend into melodrama. The sound picture gives unusual prominence to the winds, brass, and percussion, and the phrasing has a dance-like weight. (Most recordings of ballet music, it’s worth pointing out, are not made by ballet orchestras.) In "Masks," you can hear the successive entrances of cornet, clarinet, trumpet, and oboe. The rock-steady honk of tuba (or is that a contrabassoon?) in the "Dance of the Knights" unmasks the Capulets’ sexual repression (as did the backbends and pelvic thrusts of the Choo San Goh version Boston Ballet staged in the ’80s). A solo flute is skittering and hesitant in the ensuing "Juliet’s Variation"; the horns are reverent and not inappropriately rough-edged at the wedding; the xylophone mocks both combatants in "The Duel" between Tybalt and Mercutio. McPhee’s firm grasp on the structure makes it the more effective when he does let go, as when Romeo bids farewell to Juliet at the end of act one.

The packaging could be better. This recording is dedicated to the late Dr. Beatrice Barrett, a long-time Boston Ballet benefactor and former trustee who passed away last September, and the booklet cover is a painting from her collection — Pierre Soulages’s 9 Juin, 1964 — that’s not at all attractive in reproduction and has no apparent connection with Romeo and Juliet. The composer, the conductor, and the orchestra go unmentioned on the front cover, and the orchestra members are not identified inside; the layout, moreover, is not professional-looking, and though McPhee’s essay provides background and insights, the text is not free of typos.

Similarly generous and with a slightly different selection, Michael Tilson Thomas’s San Francisco disc is less idiomatic to my ears but at $9 also cheaper. Or for $13, you can get the excellent Naxos release of the complete ballet performed by Andrew Mogrelia and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. But this is the Boston Ballet Orchestra’s best effort to date. It went for, if memory serves, $15 at the company boutique during the Swan Lake run; if you can’t find it at Virgin or Tower, call (617) 695-6950 or visit www.bostonballet.org