Surely something of a misnomer? After all, the only essential
element that distinguishes ballet is that we see someone dancing
or, at the very least, moving, on stage. Music is not actually
necessary, let alone essential, as was discussed a few years
ago on an interesting Ballet Alert! forum page – see
here.
Nonetheless, taking the double-CD set’s title as really meaning
“extracts from some of the scores it is essential to be aware
of if you are interested in ballet” (which, had it been used,
wouldn’t, I imagine, have left much space on the cover for a
picture), this is a pretty good job.
John Lanchbery’s idiomatically theatrical recordings of the
Tchaikovsky ballets with the Philharmonia have been much admired
since their original release and still sound very impressive,
in spite of coming up to their 30th birthday. The
well chosen extracts on disc 1 showcase, in passing, some especially
beguiling playing from violinist Christopher Warren-Green and
cellist Robert Truman. André Previn was something of a Prokofiev
advocate when he headed the London Symphony Orchestra (I seem
to recall Alexander Nevsky featuring on BBC TV’s André
Previn’s Music Night) and the Cinderella and Romeo
and Juliet extracts are, as might be expected, very well
done here. Shorter extracts from Minkus’s Don Quixote -
Robert Irving conducting an arrangement of his own that I find
far preferable to Lanchbery’s as heard on other discs in this
EMI series - and Hérold’s La fille mal gardée as winningly
conducted by Barry Wordsworth round off a hugely enjoyable first
CD.
The contents of the second disc may well be “essential” in the
eyes of EMI, but I suspect that not all tracks will necessarily
be immediately appealing to a large part of the target market.
When I played the discs on a long car journey, for instance,
my passengers who described themselves as “enjoying a good tune”
and who had loved the Tchaikovsky, the Minkus, the Khachaturian
and the Romeo and Juliet (the jury remained out on the
Cinderella), found Stravinsky, Poulenc and Ravel to be
rather harder work. Once again, however, the performances have
clearly been chosen with care and, if the repertoire appeals
to you - and with the regular caveat that you should check for
unnecessary duplications if collecting other issues in this
series - you will certainly enjoy them a great deal.
The very nature of releases like this suggests that they are
most likely to be listened to casually rather than with great
concentration. Bearing that in mind, it is worth observing that
the dynamic range on these discs is very wide indeed and that,
when listened to in a car, the ambient noise of the vehicle
forces one to turn up the volume for quiet passages only to
have to turn it down again regularly whenever a dramatic and
musical climax hoves into view.
Rob Maynard
Performer details
Philharmonia Orchestra/John Lanchbery (Swan Lake, Sleeping
Beauty and The Nutcracker)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Robert Irving (Don Quixote Act
3)
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth (La
fille mal gardée )
London Symphony Orchestra/André Previn (Romeo and Juliet,
Cinderella and Daphnis and Chloé)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Yuri Temirkanov (Spartacus)
Philharmonia Orchestra/Robert Irving (Giselle and Les
Sylphides)
London Festival Ballet Orchestra/Terence Kern (Le Corsaire)
New Philharmonia Orchestra/Sir Charles Mackerras (Coppélia
and Sylvia)
Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo/Manuel Rosenthal (Gaîté
Parisienne)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (Petrushka
and Apollo)
Philharmonia Orchestra/Georges Prêtre (Les Biches)
Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse/Michel Plasson (Symphonic
variations and Jewels)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/John Lanchbery (Tales
of Beatrix Potter)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Charles Mackerras (Pineapple
Poll)
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin (Rodeo)
City of London Sinfonia/Richard Hickox (Serenade and
Symphony in C)
EMI CLASSICS 6486502 [78:49 + 79:12] 
