SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Prom 46, Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty: London Symphony Orchestra; Valery Gergiev (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London 20.8.2008 (JPr)


Who would believe Wagner would have a lasting effect on Tchaikovsky? After his visit to Bayreuth in 1876 to hear the Ring he wrote ‘Bayreuth has left me with disagreeable recollections, though my artistic ambition was flattered more than once. It appears I am as by no means as unknown in Western Europe as I believed. The disagreeable recollections are raised by the uninterrupted bustle in which I was obliged to take part … After the last notes of Götterdämmerung, I felt as though I had been let out of prison. The Ring may be actually a magnificent work, but it is certain that there is nothing so endlessly and wearisomely spun out.’ I mused on this during this very long evening of Tchaikovsky’s entire The Sleeping Beauty ballet score and how I longed for my own participation in the Bayreuth ‘uninterrupted bustle’ where I  would be during the following week.

Tchaikovsky also wrote about Wagner’s words, music and visuals ‘Because in real life people do not, in passing bursts of passionate emotion, sing songs, there cannot be an aria; because two persons do not talk to each other simultaneously but listen to each other, there cannot be a duet. Wagner, perhaps too readily forgetting that real-life truth and artistic truth are two completely different truths, strives, in a word, to be rational.’ In order to counter Wagner’s (admittedly gargantuan) rationality, soon after his Bayreuth visit Tchaikovsky began composing Eugene Onegin. The influence of Wagner also lives on in the ballets Swan Lake (he was working on that during the late 1870s) and The Sleeping Beauty of 1889. Swan Lake has a hero called Siegfried and a character turned by a magic spell into a swan and Sleeping Beauty includes a character put into an enchanted sleep and woken with a kiss. We can find clear similarities here with works of Wagner.

So it is not difficult to see what attracted Tchaikovsky to the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fairytale when commissioned by Vsevolozhsky, director of the Imperial Theatres. Vsevolozhsky was considering dispensing with ballet-master Petipa as the audiences were not coming to the theatres. However, he decided to give him one last chance and decided that Perrault’s sixteenth-century La belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty) would be the work to display the talents of the many fine Russian soloists produced by Petipa's guidance, as well as to showcase Petipa's great knowledge of classical dance. Vsevolozhsky also conceived it as a 'no expense spared' production that would recreate the glories of the grand productions of Louis XIV but without the lengthy interpolations by actors and singers,  as in the seventeenth century.

In the case of The Sleeping Beauty, Vsevolozhsky himself would be both librettist and costume designer. In trying to secure Tchaikovsky's collaboration with the project for the Mariinsky Theatre, Vsevolozhsky wrote to Tchaikovsky in May 1888 telling him of his conception for the ballet and suggesting music inspired by Lully, Bach and Rameau. Although a complete libretto was sent him, three months later Tchaikovsky claimed never to have received one. Another was soon dispatched and seems to have been to Tchaikovsky's liking as he wrote, ‘I should like to tell you straight away how charmed and enthusiastic I am. The idea appeals to me and I wish nothing better than to write the music for it.’

The Royal Albert Hall was full for the first complete performance of a Tchaikovsky ballet score at the Proms. However exciting and beautiful some of Tchaikovsky’s sumptuous melodies are and however wonderful it was hearing these played  by an orchestra with the virtuosic capabilities of the London Symphony Orchestra, I did miss the dancers to bring this music to life. Just in the way there cannot be an opera concert performance without singers, ballet music without movement loses some of its heart. This is not music with an intrinsic narrative element but an accompaniment to dance as a physical representation of the humour, fear, cruelty, beauty, passion, life and death in any given story. I am sure Tchaikovsky would have revelled in his music being played in its entirety in this way but would never have expected it:  otherwise he would have written something very different.

Anybody still disbelieving that Wagner connection I discussed earlier should listen to the poignant ‘sleep’ music at the end of Act I and compare it with the end of Die Walküre as Wotan leaves Brünnhilde asleep on her rock. I suggest you will agree that I am right in this.

Only once or twice did I wonder how much the LSO had the opportunity to rehearse nearly three hours of music. Once was in the Act II Scène and Danses where the courtly dances seemed more leaden-footed than they need have been. Elsewhere there were moments that were clearly just incidental music, processional stuff to get characters onto and around the stage and here my concentration drifted. Nevertheless, the highlights of the ballet, the Rose Adagio and the Act III Pas de deux raised the emotional temperature much higher than I expected. Here the music had a strong organic sense and also was not subject to any tempo whims set by the ballerina. Also the Act II Panorama made me misty-eyes for the wonderful production I saw by Rudolf Nureyev in 1970’s for the (then) London Festival Ballet where this scene was beautifully presented.

In truth it was only the memory of Nureyev and other great dancers I have seen in The Sleeping Beauty over the years that made this long evening go by surprisingly quickly. I could imagine the Rose Adagio; I could see Puss in Boots, the Bluebirds, Red Riding Hood and the Wolf as well as Aurora and Desire of course.

It is always fascinating to see Gergiev conduct, head down, his fluttering fingers reaching across his attentive musicians, yet, on this occasion in music that in is often relentlessly joyful, it was wonderful to see him embody this too. He was smiling and positively waltzing on the podium at times as he cajoled the strings split left and right. His orchestra always give 100% for him I believe and were excellent again here; from the exquisite solos by their guest leader Andrew Haveron, right through the woodwind and brass sections, to the timpani, the harpist and Helen Yates’s valiant work on the triangle.

As a one-off, this was interesting but please BBC Proms do not do this again for other ballets. Or if you must, then please leap into the twenty-first century and give us an audio-visual presentation of scenes from the particular ballet - if not real dancers for some of it!

Jim Pritchard


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