Dazzling woods, stagnant lake

Here's what I want: to persuade as many of you as are interested that the new, Disney-backed film of Sondheim's Into the Woods is infinitely better than any of the lukewarm or downright vindictive reviews I've read of it would lead us to believe, and to urge you to go and see it. Derek Deane's assisted Petipa/Ivanov Swan Lake for English National Ballet at the London Coliseum needs no such special pleading, but much as I enjoyed catching the first night as the guest of The Arts Desk's excellent chief ballet critic Hanna Weibye - who raved here - I have more than a few reservations about both the nature of the tradition and even the performance of prima ballerina Alina Cojocaru, my favourite Aurora but not on this evidence the greatest Odette. I know, I know, ENB is so lucky to have her, above all dancing with Ivan 'the Beautiful' Vasiliev (only picture of him below among the selection offered by  ASH for ENB), and in the past I've found her dancing peerless, but this was odd from where I sat in a good seat towards the back of the stalls.

Why? Because I couldn't see any facial expression. It was as if she'd decided Odette has been turned into a kind of mechanical doll by Rotbart (vigorously etched by James Streeter, but our villain has nothing to do other than flap his rather splendid wings). Maybe that's one way of interpreting her, but then what about the poetry of the budding love between Prince Siegfried and the swan-into-forlorn maiden (or male swan, in Matthew Bourne's heartbreaking reinvention, which would have so moved Tchaikovsky)? As Hanna remarked, Cojocaru only let her face light up once, as the Prince pledged true love towards the end of that crucial second act.

My other problem is that I'm perhaps too fixated on a tall Odette - perhaps not an option for the small but perfectly formed Vasiliev. Still, you need to know who the Swan Queen is the minute she emerges from the gaggle. I'll never forget Svetlana Zakharova's infinite, and infinitely expressive arms at the Mariinsky. Cojocaru simply doesn't stand out from the pack, not to the non-connoisseur of dance at any rate.

Cojocaru was, though, superlative as black swan Odile (apart from the dull Drigo-arranged variation where her execution made one fear for the famous multiple fouettés to come, though as it turned out there was no need to worry). Here I could read the switch between smiles and mock-sadness towards Siegfried and craftiness towards dad Rotbart's implausible egging on (and why on earth would a court tolerate those freak-henchmen of his? I know it's not meant to be realistic, but still...)

On the other hand, I couldn't take my eyes off Vasiliev. Not just because he is indeed so beautiful - part of a trio in my books that also includes Ivan Putrov and Roberto Bolle - but also because the slightest tilt of his body suggested his pain and boredom at court, his anguish in the later stages. The trouble is that apart from the leapy-leapy in the 'Black Swan' Pas de deux, Petipa and Ivanov's Prince is a mere support act. A long way indeed from the Spartacus with which Vasiliev burst upon the London scene.

I thought the corps excellent, and the four cygnets mesmerising in their leg-work; it took Hanna to explain to me how certain angles would be more perfect from the Russians, but she was impressed too.

The real poetry comes from all those waving arms, that sea of bluish-white which for me is the real treat of an old-style Swan Lake. Otherwise, Matthew Bourne's storytelling is superior as a reflection of the music at every point, especially in Act Four, so limp here.

Thankfully ENB didn't take over wholesale the Drigo-butchered score which goes with the rehabilitation of 1895: gone were those horrid Tchaikovsky piano-piece arrangements which are so alien to the world of the composer's through-composed final act. Still, the Pas de deux pretext for a borrowing from the otherwise-cut Pas de six of Act 3 does nothing for the dancers and holds up the action just as badly as Drigo's number. The score was well enough conducted by Gavin Sutherland, but clearly hampered by ridiculously slow tempi for nearly all of Odette's music (at Cojocaru's demand? I can't tell).Star for me was an oboe hero of mine, Gareth Hulse. Can't quite make out why the London Sinfonietta's top man has ended up here, but it's a quality band if a bit thin on the violins.

No such extreme musical surgery was applied to Sondheim's masterpiece of music-theatre Into the Woods - now, for me absolutely the tops of all his work for sheer integrated, clockwork perfection - in its fortunately not too Disneyfied version by Rob Marshall. Some songs are cut, though I didn't miss any except the meaningful reprise, with a very different text, of the princes' 'Agony'. Thanks to certain insistences and the guiding presence of original 'book' writer James Lapine, kids may well be disconcerted by the especially dark turn the counterpoint of stories takes in the second half: no fairy-tale happy-ever-afters here. And though I loathed in principle the idea of Sondheim's having caved in to let Rapunzel survive and not bereave the Witch too severely, in practice her riding off with her prince was probably an OK decision; there's enough death and misery around that part of the drama as it is.

None of the stage-show's sharpness has been lost. Indeed, its brilliant first quarter of an hour is paralleled by superlative filmic cross-cutting between the characters. I didn't know the names of about half the members of the great ensemble* but I was convinced by them all.

Well, not perhaps at every point by James Corden's Baker, but he does cry convincingly and he's generally simpatico. It was going to take a lot to convince me that this Baker's Wife could match up to Imelda Staunton (in Richard Jones's original London production - revisited the soundtrack over Christmas, and it's one of the best ever) and Jenna Russell at Regent's Park, but Emily Blunt is so winningly lovely and mobile of expression, and her singing is fine. As is everyone else's, though I wonder if there was a bit of help for Daniel Huttlestone as cheeky dimwit Jack in his number 'There Are Giants In The Sky', which sounded almost too good to be true for a kid.

No doubt about it, Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood is a total star. Good lord, is that Annette Crosbie in about 40 seconds of Grandma time? Not to mention Simon Russell Beale as the Baker's Father and Frances de la Tour revving her contralto register as the Giantess - luxury indeed. Jonny Depp is as surprisingly good smarming up the Wolf in 'Hello, Little Girl' as he was in his off kilter Sweeney Todd (Sondheim's favourite film adaptation until now: does this take pride of place, I wonder?)

All the acerbity of the lyrics bites through, the execution of the G&S-in-black patter song 'Your Fault' is astounding and this time I bought into the possibly oversentimental music of 'No One Is Alone' - well I remember Richard Jones telling me he thought that was a disappointing lie - because the words keep it sharp. So did the fact that we were watching it with a goddaughter who'd still been in her early teens when her mum died. 'People sometimes leave you/Halfway through the woods' is a line that always gets to me.

Perhaps I'd have liked a more active segue into the return of the opening music at the end - it's used to back some of the credits - but that's my only major criticism. Jonathan Tunick is on hand, as ever, to make sure the larger-scale film orchestrations really work (it sounded good, if as ever a bit overamplified, in the Vue Cinema on Lower Regent Street). The woods look sinister-beautiful - do I see my beloved Frithsden beeches? Must check - and the film medium fully exploits the special-effects potential of exploding beans, beanstalk, whirlwind witch, etc.

So what, finally, of Meryl Streep as the Witch, referencing her age reversal in Death Becomes Her halfway through? Sensational. '[The] Last Midnight' rises dizzyingly to its 11 o'clock number status, a sinister Ravelian waltz to set aside the 3/4s of A Little Night Music, and leaves us gasping for breath. It also, incidentally, has some of the best-set lyrics: 'You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right'. So here's one musical they got as right as the cinema ever can, and if you say 'I wasn't going to go but now I shall', then my job's well done.

*Not quite as starry as the cast of the second read-through back in 1995, when Columbia Pictures and Jim Henson were interested. Sondheim lists the names in his second volume of complete lyrics and observations, Look, I Made a Hat: Robin Williams (the Baker), Goldie Hawn (the Wife), Cher (the Witch), Carrie Fisher (Ugly Sister Lucinda), Bebe Neuwirth (Ugly Sister Florinda), Moira Kelly (Cinderella), Kyle McLachlan (Cinderella's Prince), Brendan Fraser (Rapunzel's Prince), Elijah Wood (Jack), Roseanne Barr (Jack's Mother), Danny DeVito (the Giant) and Steve Martin (the Wolf). 

Why did it come to nothing? According to Sondheim, 'because of one of those periodic shake-ups where a new platoon of executives replaces the old one, eager to throw out all projects begun before their arrival in order to demonstrate the freshness of their re-thinking'. Familiar story in all walks of life, alas.

Anyway, let's celebrate that it DID get made nearly 20 years later, and with more of the original material. I can't imagine the opening sequence being bettered.

Orders of Russian angels

Definitely the cherubim and seraphim of Russian orthodox church music this year are a book and a CD. The book is the tender loving resurrection of our beloved late Noëlle Mann's work on an anthology for choirs to enjoy, as we did in the Kalina Choir under her guidance for all too few years. For that reason quite a few of the settings are familiar to me, though I'm racking my brains to remember the favourite - Chesnokov's Cherubic Hymn, I think.

It's also wonderful to have two settings of the birthday 'Mnogaya lyeta' ('Many years' or 'Long life') to hand. We used to sing Bortnyansky's version at the end, if memory serves, of every concert, but I'm also pleased to see Prokofiev's arrangements for either men's voices or seven-part chorus as taken from Ivan the Terrible, where the ceremonial scenes are a reminder that you could slip in orthodox music in Soviet times so long as it served the context of an historical film or play.

Heartfelt thanks to Noëlle's daughter Julia and her husband Kristian Hibberd for seeing everything through to publication as well as to Oxford University Press for making such a handsome job of it. There's also a very useful contextual introduction by Tatyana Soloviova.

I found out a great deal of interesting things about the luminaries of the style - Chesnokov, Kastalsky, Viktor (as opposed to the symphonist Vasily) Kalinnikov - when I was researching notes for that fabulous choir Tenebrae's new disc, Russian Treasures. The pathos of the Russian church music revival coming to a halt in 1917, and the fates of its strongest supporters, made for a moving background.

And the performances, which I had on an advance disc, formed a bedrock to my work. The famous low B flats of Russian basses are successfully emulated by the Tenebrae men on the first three tracks. There's special richness in the Cherubic Hymn of Moscow Synodal School disciple Nikolay Golovanov, later a conductor of incredible magnetism and eccentricity who was harried to death, like Prokofiev, in the last Stalin years. I think perhaps what haunts me most here is the way Chesnokov's 'Tebe poyem' works its way out of darkest B minor into light. It's a stunning collection, as good as any released by Russian choirs (though the Petersburg Cappella sound remains unlike any other worldwide).

This picture made me especially jolly when J showed it to me on Facebook. Standing are countertenor Iestyn Davies, tenor Ian Bostridge and baritone Peter Coleman-Wright in the Christmas-decorated Moscow home of the seated Rozhdestvenskys, great Gennady and his remarkable pianist wife Viktoria Postnikova. It made me especially glad to be reminded of the remarkable happening that occasioned the meeting - the Russian premiere of Britten's Death in Venice by one of his most stalwart Russian interpreters (Rozhdestvensky gave, inter alia, the first Soviet performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1966 with Yelena Obraztsova as a mezzo Oberon). And now, 38 years after its birth, Britten's last opera arrived at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

In amidst all the grotesque Putinshchina (is that right?), it was something of a miracle: an opera by a gay composer based on a novella by a gay author (Thomas Mann) about a gay man (Gustav von Aschenbach) longing for a beautiful youth, performed in a conservatory named after another gay composer (Tchaikovsky). I'm guessing that the performance, headed incidentally by four straight men, passed without censure only because it was done in concert - the elephant in the room would have been the exquisite dancing Tadzio.

Anyway, full marks to the British Council, whose photos these are, for facilitating it. I asked Iestyn on his return if he'd write about the experience for The Arts Desk - and he did, brilliantly. While we're on what would surprise Tchaikovsky, I've declared it repeatedly over the last 18 years: the very thought of the grand Pas de deux, Pas d'action, call it what you will, in Swan Lake's second act being danced so tenderly and lovingly by two men would have been unimaginable to him. But still it goes on its rapturously-received way, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake with its virile, dangerous male swans, and at Sadler's Wells the other week the revival showed no signs of wear and tear.  I'm glad to have gone again and written about it for TAD.

The 'Odette/Odile' this time was the tall and sexy Jonathan Ollivier, pictured above with Sam Archer as the Prince by Hugo Glendinning and in many ways a fine replacement for Adam Cooper of sainted memory. We even got an orchestra back after several years of pre-recorded compromise. I praised it enthusiastically, much to the delight of conductor Brett Morris, who sent me a warm e-mail; time and again you find the music overlooked in ballet reviews, so I was happy to redress the balance. And I'm happy now - two days after putting up this post - to revisit the first Prince-Swan pairing as filmed in 1996, Scott Ambler as a superbly tortured prince and the dream swan king Adam Cooper. The picture isn't the best, but I wanted just that Pas de deux as it brings tears to my eyes whenever I watch it.

Serendipitously coinciding, Neeme Järvi's Bergen Philharmonic recording of the score on Chandos, absolutely complete, arrived a week before the return visit. As with their Sleeping Beauty, I've written the notes, indulging my long-term wish to do a number-by-number synopsis, so I can't praise it anywhere else. But I DO think this is as good as it gets, pending re-release of Rozhdestvensky's Moscow Radio Symphony version - and even that doesn't have the benefit of such extraordinary sound.

James Ehnes is once again the solo violinist, Johannes Wik has licence as before to work his individual magic on the harp cadenzas and Bergen cornettist Gary Peterson's playing in the Danse Napolitaine is out of this world. Järvi toys so beautifully with rhythms, melodies and reprises: sometimes brisk, sometimes leisurely, he's always unpredictable. Buy!

Lake creatures

There's a not too contrived link to be made between Dvorak's Rusalka, which I saw at Glyndebourne for the second time yesterday following on from my pre-performance talk, and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, which you can hear in anything but its entirety (more anon) conducted by Gergiev at the Proms tonight. The photos are by Alastair Muir for Glyndebourne and Natasha Razina for the Mariinsky.

I was lucky to be able to play to the punters yesterday a hard-to-find recorded snippet* of the reconstructed duet from Tchaikovsky's discarded opera Undine which he used again as the great lakeside Pas d'action of his first ballet (and aptly; Odette, though originally a mortal maiden, is a transfigured creature of the lake whose prince betrays her, in this case with a black-swan decoy). The source is very similar to Dvorak's: a very poignant adaptation of the Melusine legend by De La Motte Fouque. His Undine spawned a whole host of forgotten or rarely-revived operas, starting with Hoffmann's (he of Offenbach's tales - composer as well as poet) in 1816.

It was fun to play the audience, as I partly did two years ago, snippets of water-nymph music more familiar in other contexts - not just Tchaikovsky's but also Mendelssohn's - his Fair Melusine Overture unquestionably influenced Wagner - and Offenbach's (the overture to Die Rheinnixen became the most celebrated of all Barcarolles). I also played them Mackerras's arrangement of Sullivan's Iolanthe music in Pineapple Poll, and asked them to guess the composer. The suggestions were gratifying, and not unreasonable: Wagner? Janacek? Mahler? No-one got it, though one lady who'd loved Sasha Regan's all-male production at Wilton's Music Hall production - the best thing I've seen up to this Rusalka all year - may have been too shy to speak up.

The revival was just as focused, emotional and ravishing as its predecessor. I've written a bit about this on The Arts Desk, but it will do no harm to reproduce this marvellous photo of Rusalka in extremis with her handsome, love-death-seeking Prince; Dina Kuznetsova made the role her very individual own, while Pavel Cernoch stole AND broke hearts with looks and tenderest singing in that greatest of final scenes.


And let's not forget the Wood Nymphs with their bark-rustling skirts and their breast-waggling, leaping dances - love the way Still introduces an element of Bacchic threat into their revels. It's all in the myths, of course, but the way she makes it real is wholly her own.


We have to see Still's Wagner Ring cycle some time soon; she'd be the perfect director for it.

And of course Glyndebourne is the ideal place for Dvorak's watery, enchanted-melancholy masterpiece. The lake looked ravishing in both intervals - here's my guest, last weekend's generous hostess Deborah, on either side. As you will have noted from one of the entries below, her own garden 'rooms' give the Christies' a run for their money, and her bronze 'world gone pear-shaped' would look splendid here (they are, in fact, introducing sculptures, but rather cautiously and with mixed success). It was also a joy to walk around with someone who knew the names of each and every plant.





What I hadn't anticipated was stepping out to retrieve the picnic box after Rusalka had sung her last over the body of her prince and being greeted by a full moon rising.


Had to stand, stare and snap at the head of the lake before it was time to pile on the bus back to Lewes. Bit of a contrast here: sharper with flash above, fuzzier but perhaps more atmospheric below without.


As for tonight, you must know that the Swan Lake Gergiev conducts is still the butchered Mariinsky version of 1894, which has always accompanied the old Sergeyev production incorporating Petipa's and Ivanov's choreography. You might have forgotten musical sorrows when dazzled by so prima a ballerina as Uliana Lopatkina, who came to London for the recent Mariinsky season. My colleague Judith Flanders on The Arts Desk was a little underwhelmed.


So tonight there'll be no sad dance of swans in Tchaikovsky's originally seamless Act 4, but two totally inappropriate interpolations by Drigo of orchestrated late piano pieces. Plus about a third of the original score cut and reordered. Knowing this, I hope, should soften the blow and help you to enjoy what there is. For full details, you'll have to read my programme notes, which can be read on the Proms website.

It will still be good to hear all this music in the concert hall, but when that's the only opportunity any of us are going to get of catching the entire score live, isn't this clinging to a mistaken tradition foolhardy?

*from an LP in the collection of that great Russophile Richard Beattie Davis, courtesy of his widow Gillian.