Another Night Before Christmas and Scrooge Sutherland NAXOS 8.572744 [JS]: Classical Music Reviews

Another Night before Christmas and Scrooge
John FOX (b.1926) Carol Fantasia [6:16]; Bryan KELLY (b.1934) Scrooge [19:47]; Philip LANE (b.1950) Old Christmas Music [12:11]; Another Night before Christmas [6:00]; Matthew CURTIS (b.1959) Christmas Rush [4:23]; Vladimir REBIKOV (1866-1920) Waltz (from The Christmas Tree Suite Op. 21) [2:25]; Franz LISZT (1811-1876) The Christmas Tree Suite – 4 movements orch. Gordon Jacob [13:37]; Adam SAUNDERS (b.1968) Fairytale Sleighride [4:37]; Angela MORLEY (1923-2009) Snowride [3:43]; Pyotr Il’yich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893) November: Troika (from The Seasons) orch. Philip Lane [3:07]; Thomas Hewitt JONES (b.1984) Christmas Cracker [3:11]
Simon Callow (narrator)
RTÉ Concert Orchestra/Gavin Sutherland; Royal Ballet Sinfonia/Gavin Sutherland
rec. Studio 1, RTÉ Radio Centre, Dublin, 25-26 January 2011; Angel Studios, London, 7 January 2008, 4 May 2011
no texts included
NAXOS 8.572744 [79:20]

The best thing about this disc is the programme’s combination of freshness and familiarity. Apart from the items by Liszt and Tchaikovsky the names of few of the other works are likely to be over-familiar. However the listener soon discovers that the first and last items (by John Fox and Thomas Hewitt Jones respectively) are ingenious if at times overblown selections of well known carols. Philip Lane’s Old Christmas Music consists of arrangements of five pieces, most of them well known such as Gaudete and Warlock’s Bethlehem Down. In addition Scrooge takes the form of a much abbreviated narration of Dickens’ book with appropriate musical accompaniment. Enjoyable as this certainly is the extent of the abbreviation means that what remains is unlikely to make much sense to anyone who has not read the original, and that those who have will be disappointed at what is left out. Simon Callow gives a more restrained reading of the narration than I had expected, as he does also in Another Night before Christmas. This is a re-telling by Carol Ann Duffy of the familiar verses. I regret that I found both the words and music instantly forgettable. Nonetheless these spoken items are in some ways the best pieces on the disc.

There are however several other successful pieces here. Top of my list is Rebikov’s sugary Waltz in an arrangement for strings (the whole Suite is worth exploring) and the Liszt and Tchaikovsky arrangements, both of which easily make the listener forget their origins as piano works. The other items are very much in the light music tradition; enjoyable if on the whole not very memorable, although it is interesting to hear how many different kinds of Sleigh Ride are possible.

All of the items are convincingly played and recorded. If I was less than overwhelmed overall this may be because I was expecting too much. If you want an undemanding, unhackneyed if unexciting collection of Christmas orchestral music this may well fit the bill.

John Sheppard

see also review by Byzantion

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