Composed within two
years of each other this brace of British
ballet scores make good programming.
Walton and Lambert were of course friends
and contemporaries and it was Lambert
who asked Walton to score The Wise Virgins
– and to do to Bach as Beecham routinely
did unto Handel – though it was Lambert
who seems to have selected the pieces,
mainly from the sacred and secular cantatas.
The premiere was in April 1940 at Sadler’s
Wells, with the Vic-Wells company presided
over by Lambert and some stellar talent
(Rex Whistler’s sets and costumes, Fonteyn
and Michael Soames dancing, choreography
by Ashton), but an abortive tour to
Holland later led to the loss of costumes,
set and music. It’s for this reason
that Philip Lane has adapted the score,
arranging the three parts missing from
the suite of the Wise Virgins – Sleepers
Wake, The Saviour is born today
and What God hath done, is rightly
done, which is, in Lane’s words
an "adapted reprise" of the
third movement.
All this explains why
the complete ballet is now recorded
in this form and differs from the commercial
suite. It’s captivating. There is great
delicacy of scoring for harp and wind
in the opening movement – Lane’s work
– and fine solo playing (from the principal
cello Karen Stephenson, rightly named,
in the second movement and leader Cynthia
Fleming in Sheep may safely graze,
amongst others). The suite is fresh,
bathed in languor and chorale strength,
expertly orchestrated and sympathetically
played by the BBC Concert Orchestra
under Barry Wordsworth.
Lambert’s Horoscope
is still available I believe in his
own recording on EMI though many will
remember the Robert Irving LP of the
1950s in its various incarnations. Conceived
in 1937 Horoscope was completed the
following year and again Fonteyn and
Soames danced, though it suffered the
same fact as Walton’s ballet when the
Vic-Well had to escape from Holland
in 1940 (they weren’t alone; Boult was
conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra
at the same time and had to extricate
himself sharpish). The five-movement
suite is relatively well known but here
we have the nine movement complete ballet
score (luckily a copy was kept in London).
From the wispy, rather sinuously sinister
impressionistic gauze of the opening
of the Palindromic Prelude we
are soon swept up into the Dance
for the followers of Leo, a jazzy,
syncopated movement full of lower brass,
percussion and plenty of animation.
Strings are rightly veiled and recessed
in the Saraband for the followers
of Virgo that follows – with its
delicacy of phrasing and aerial finesse.
Lambert, full of contrast, now throws
in a bluff, brassy Man’s Variation
barely a minute long, followed by one
for Woman strong on Delian atmosphere
which gives good solo responsibilities
(Duke Ellington’s phrase and Lambert
of all people would have approved) to
winds and solo violin. Wordsworth doesn’t
over press the Bacchanale and is astutely
able to convey the full measure of the
beautifully orchestrated Valse for
the Gemini and its Light Music profile.
If Respighi haunts the Invocation
that ends Horoscope that’s no bad thing
especially when, though the music’s
heady, it’s also so nobly spacious.
There are fine notes
from Philip Lane and a warm attractive
recording.
Jonathan Woolf
BBC Concert Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth 