Sunday 9 December 2012

Being Beauteous: Bourne and Järvi




Here’s my chance to wax more or less lyrical about two quirky but undeniably loving homages to Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, which the more I hear it the more I’m convinced is his meisterwerk. I had to own up to the BBC Music Magazine that since I’d written the very long, number-by-number notes for Neeme Järvi’s absolutely complete recording with the superb Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, I couldn’t review it for the publication. But I can attempt to do so here, having got that proviso out of the way. As for Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures Sleeping Beauty, ‘A Gothic Romance’, I went to the Sadler's Wells press night on Friday courtesy of my Arts Desk colleague Ismene Brown, who writes brilliantly about it as ever and almost convinces me about points over which we disagreed. The nub of which is that I warmed to it much more than she did.

What I admire most is Bourne’s way of telling a story, and in this case one that is very much his own spun from some of the elements of Perrault’s tale. I’m not sure how much of the plot one should give away, since I spent part of the first half wondering how the gardening boy/groundsman with whom young Aurora has such a sweet and sometimes funny first-love romance would survive one hundred years. A bite on the neck from Christopher Marney's Count Lilac, aka fairy leader (pictured below with fellow winged things in the Prologue, first of Simon Annand's production images) gave a good hint. You can see how effective Bourne regular Lez Brotherston's designs are, though there aren't enough pics of them in the image gallery.


The biggest twists are unveiled in the second half, with more than one awakening kiss failing to lead to the expected resolution. Shall we say that the grand Caradoc ball – yes, he’s the tall and sexy son of Carabosse, who expired some time after the Prologue – entails radical re-jigging and major cutting of Tchaikovsky’s score. What Bourne does use of it, and where he uses it, always has a strong musical/dramatic motivation. First change is the royal March of the Prologue banished in favour of the Act One garden hustle and bustle, which suits the 1890s bedchamber intimacy of this narrative and involves a delightful puppet baby climbing the thick curtain drapes. The musical number is reprised in its proper place when we meet the 20-year old Aurora in a Juliettish playfulness with her nurse before her boy evades detection in her bedroom (charming Hannah Vassallo and cute Dominic North pictured below).


Re-ordering in the garden scene, mostly Edwardian whites, means that Aurora’s variation is played out with interloping Caradoc. Surely Bourne means parallels here with the male Odile of his Swan Lake - who can forget Adam Cooper there? - especially since both numbers have eloquent violin solos (other witty references I thought I spotted are to Macmillan's Anastasia and, as I've already suggested, his Romeo and Juliet as well as other scenes in Bourne's own Swan Lake). He brings back another virtuoso sequence for violin, the Entr’acte of Act Two which has surely never been danced in ANY previous choreography of Sleeping Beauty, for a climactic Pas de Deux in the last act (obviously the Aurora-Desiré adagio is saved up for when good has triumphed over evil). The Rose Adagio is less successful. What Ismene writes about real dance never being properly carried through applies here, as choreography gives way to precipitate mime and Aurora falls swooning from a prick on the thorn of Caradoc’s black rose; that doesn’t work for me. But the curtain certainly does.

Gone are the courtly dances of Act Two – Bourne has moved in the opposite direction from his Cinderella, which was the first to rehabilitate Prokofiev’s world-travel divertissement – but we get the vision imaginatively treated, and more of the Entr’acte Symphonique’s spellbinding sleep music than ever before (still not quite the crucial 100 bars I discovered it to be, but everything except a repeat; the charismatic Jurowski lookalike Ben Bunce pictured with Vassallo below).


Of course there are no fairy-tale animals at the ball, but the radical, near-atonal Puss in Boots number is brilliantly staged when our hero infiltrates the black and red Walpurgis Night and the brilliant 5/4 Sapphire Variation is a welcome survivor from the second fairy sequence. A shame the Bluebird enchantment wouldn’t fit into this context. But the real problem is that chunks of a divertissement can't really be pressed into service for the long-term dramatic narrative which Tchaikovsky has abandoned (in favour of something equally wonderful) at this point. Anyway although by and large the biggest orchestral climaxes aren't matched by the fitful classicism of the choreography, the corps numbers, the Polonaise and the Mazurka, get vintage Bourne creepy-mannerist treatment. And the fashionable Twilight/Buffy links are canny.


The Apotheosis brings a neat return to the best idea of the Prologue. How prescient was it to give a major role to a royal baby?

Forewarned was forearmed in the case of the pre-recorded score. I’d hated the over-amplification of Prokofiev’s Cinderella music, and when I met two of Bourne’s team with J at the Garrick on Monday, I asked if this couldn’t be at a more natural level. Well, it was, and truthful enough to tell that Brett Morris had mostly done a wonderful job, with especially good violin solos from Gina McCormack. I loved the tempo for the Lilac Fairy music at the end of the Prologue, and the ‘Sleep’ Entr’acte sounded as spellbinding as it can.

That bewitching sequence came as a bit of a shock on Järvi’s recording: virtually double the tempo, with the Carabosse chords broken rather than sustained. He also has a Panorama at a speed which the woodwind and horn support can only just articulate, and a sprint at the end of the sublime Bluebird Adagio. But, for all that they probably couldn’t be danced to, how filled with energy are the faster passages. Järvi (pictured below by Till Veerhae) offers characteristic rubato that's often so subtle as to be barely perceptible but gives so much life to the symphonic passages, and a spectacular recording provides extended dynamic range which is especially impressive at the piccolo end.


Was it necessary to bring in James Ehnes and Robert deMaine respectively for the violin and cello solos? I wasn't sure at first, having heard Aurora’s Variation in Act One more powerfully done. But Ehnes’s sophistication creates wonders in the big Entr'acte Bourne found such a good use for, and the cello’s Andante Cantabile offshoot in the vision has wonderful life and line. There are some wackily extended harp cadenzas, and the woodwind in the animal portraits are a dream.

I did a Radio 3 Building a Library on the ballet score some years back, when Ermler’s Covent Garden performance came out on top; now I reckon it would be a very close-run thing between that, Lanchbery’s dansante Philharmonia recording, which took some time to appear on CD and now Järvi’s. His has the most demonstration-quality sound of them all. And I can say here, hoping to be believed, my devotion has nothing to do with the fact that I have a stake in its success…

11 comments:

Susan Scheid said...

Ah, on the subject of beautiful/beauteous (both fine words, by me, too!), Sleeping Beauty is one of those ballets I thought I knew, but clearly don't know at all (I'm listening to it now--though not any of the right ones, which I couldn't locate offhand).

It's undeniably lovely, and, if you say it's Tchaikovsky's meisterwerk, attention must be paid, for I believe you've listened to everything by this composer multiple times, am I right? (I remember when you wrote of the Brilliant set, and noted that it didn't contain, was it The Tempest?)

I've put Jarvi's Sleeping Beauty on my ever-growing CD wish list, for, among other things, I want to read those liner notes! I'm surprised you weren't irritated by Bourne's major cuts in the score.

Yet I'm only a quarter of the way through DQ! I need 9 lives, for sure . . .

Susan Scheid said...

You and Jessica Duchen appear to be on the same page about the Bourne: "It's brilliant, beautiful, utterly bananas, overwhelming in its tenderness, dazzling in its imaginative freedom - and it works because it all springs from love and respect for the original," and I think this answers my question about why the cuts can work.

David said...

Well, Sue, I guess all choreographed Beauties are cut - and Bourne actually included more of the usual casualties than anyone else. Though he probably also cut more. The last act is especially tough if you love the score - but he always had his reasons.

I guess I'm a bit less ecstatic than Jessica, and perhaps her piece needed to come with a spoiler alert. On which note, I'm absolutely furious that a colleague on The Arts Desk gave away the denouement of that splendid Danish thriller The Killing's Series 2...has rendered it not worth the watching now.

Delighted that you'll be listening with your sharp ears to the entire score. What invention across nearly three hours of music. I think I'd have Act Three - oh, the wacky orchestration of the animal pieces - performed in its entirety in one half of an ideal concert.

Willym said...

My first Sleeping Beauty was Margot Fontyan and Michael Somes in the old Royal Ballet production (Oliver Messel at his most glorious) and since then its been Kirov, National Ballet of Canada and Rome - the later beefed up so that Carla Fraci could turn it into Carabosse Learns A Lesson in Love and do a "gypsy" turn. It sounds like Bourne has done a bit more than beefing ...

Always loved the Lanchberry recording but then I guess it depends on wither you are looking at to be danced to or simply as a miraculous listening experience.

David said...

La Fracci's attempt sounds daft as only ballet can be. At least Bourne's revamp - and I use that term advisedly - has integrity.

Catriona said...

Ha! Glad I didn't ruin it for you, having seen it on its pre-London run. The audience up here was generally entranced by it and (again being careful not to spoil it) loved the baby. I liked the references - the Nicholas and Alexandra coming of age, the Michael Jackson/Thriller echoes. It was better by far than Scottish Ballet's Sleeping Beauty, where the man-handling of Aurora in the rose Adagio looked very like child-molestation (tiny ballerina) and the Bluebird had an alarming resemblance to David Bowie ...

David said...

Gosh, Catriona, it has done the rounds already: I'm amazed they succeeded in keeping an embargo on major press reviews until the London opening. I was told by company members that Bourne was at every single performance, tweaking and revising nightly.

Have you had the Scottish Opera Pirates of Penzance yet? I'm looking forward to that coming down here. Bad news in store for the company, though, it sounds from hearsay which I can only hope is wrong.

Catriona said...

The Pirates isn't due till the spring - but the Thomas Allen Magic Flute went down well. The friend who came along with me has never quite been convinced by the drama and storyline, although she loves the music. However, she was won over on this occasion by the charm and entertainment value. I am still meeting acquaintances in Edinburgh giggling over morris dancers - you had to be there.

David said...

I can't think where the morris dancers might fit - Monostatos's team, perhaps, dancing to Papageno's magic bells?

Catriona said...

Got it in one!

Colin Dunn said...

When I went, we had to stuff our ears with tissues just to reduce the aural damage being done. We liked the production, but the sheer volume was awful. I noticed that there was no live orchestra; they were playing a good recorded orchestra over the PA system. Clearly money was being saved in doing it this way, but it is also a case of Matthew Bourne not getting the sound levels he likes from a live orchestra and preferring this ugly, and unnecessarily over-amplified, recording.