Birmingham Royal Ballet at Birmingham Hippodrome

-
THE PRODUCTION WAS WONDERFUL, AND SO WAS THE MUSIC

TCHAIKOVSKY'S NUTCRACKER
Birmingham Royal Ballet Sinfonia at Birmingham Hippodrome *****

Birmingham is so blessed, having two great orchestras, and both of them within days of each other delivering wonderful accounts of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.
I was impressed with the CBSO's symphonic reading under Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, but tonight in a packed and rapt Birmingham Hippodrome I was equally impressed with the freshness and joy of the playing of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, halfway through a season's run of this enchanting production of the ballet, but performing with no sense of routine staleness.
Philip Ellis was conducting on this occasion, and somehow he made the string complement sound more richly-cushioned than the numbers in the line-up implied. Woodwind solos were lively and eloquent (perky piccolo and gurgling clarinets to the fore), horns effortlessly noble in the magical Waltz of the Flowers, and there was a tambourine-playing tour de force in the Trepak.
And this orchestra and its conductors are able to create something symphony orchestras would struggle to do: there was a flexibility of phrasing here, allied to the expressive movements going on up aloft onstage. The players could see nothing, but they could feel the ebb and flow, channelled through the modest but so crucial baton of Philip Ellis.
Ballet without a live orchestra loses a huge dimension. I don't want to hear anything with canned sound. This was an experience which all of us present will never forget.
Christopher Morley

Popular posts from this blog

Some Enchanted Evenings at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne

-
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY ENJOYED THREE ENCHANTED EVENINGS AT EASTBOURNE'S GRAND HOTEL SOME ENCHANTED EVENINGS Appassionata at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne ***** Eastbourne's breathtakingly magnificent Grand Hotel, so imposing yet also so welcoming, has an impressive roster of visiting musicians since its opening in 1875. Among the many luminaries who have crossed its portals are Debussy (who completed La Mer here), Kreisler, Caruso, Nellie Melba, Ysaye, Paul Robeson, Myra Hess… the list goes on. Latest to join them is the young vocal quartet Appassionata, who, together with pianist Will Sharma, presented a three-night entertainment "Some Enchanted Evenings" at the end of March. It began with baritone Matthew Siveter, already a much-loved veteran of Gilbert and Sullivan productions, presenting his one-man show "A Source of Innocent Merriment", drawing material from the likes of G&S themselves, Noel Coward, Flanders and Swann, Tom Lehrer, as well as d...
Read more
-
  STIRRING ELGAR CONCERTO FROM THE CBSO LEADER CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Elgar’s Violin Concerto has provided almost as many opportunities for pointless speculation as his ‘Enigma’ Variations. Who is referred to in the work’s inscription, “Herein is enshrined the soul of...”? Is it someone codenamed “Windflower” after whom several of the work’s themes are named? Is it Alice Stuart-Wortley, daughter of the painter John Everett Millais? Is it Helen Weaver, or Elgar’s mother or possibly his wife? Who cares? Elgar himself told us all we need to know about the work when he said of it: “It's good! Awfully emotional! Too emotional, but I love it.” So would any unprejudiced listener after hearing this performance played with such tenderness, fierce concentration and passion by the CBSO’s leader Eugene Tzikindelean and backed to the hilt by the orchestra conducted by Kazuki Yamada. In the opening bars soloist and orchestra captured the mysterious haunting quality of the initial theme that ...
Read more

Jacquie Lawson e-card music

-
THE MUSIC BEHIND THE E-CARDS MIKE HUGHES-CHAMBERLAIN AND JACQUIE LAWSON E-CARDS by Christopher Morley It's always a joy when an e-greetings card plops into your inbox, not least at festive times of the year. It's easy to understand why the sending of these cyber-messages has become so popular, given the huge cost of postage nowadays At the forefront of this trend are the e-cards produced by Jacquie Lawson, and in addition to the attractive artwork, witty and sensitive storylines, and interactive opportunities offered by these little gems, comes the input of music, atmospheric and appropriate. Whether specially composed or arranged from other sources, these sound-pictures are masterminded by Mike Hughes-Chamberlain, who has made the seamless connection between a musical education and Information Technology in order to create scores for these scores of delightful little gems. He was brought up in Hindhead in Surrey, where his mother founded a music school in 1975. ...
Read more