This extensive series has already visited the major Diaghilev and Ballets
Russes commissions, or adaptations for their stage, and presented the
most obvious examples -
Le Sacre,
Daphnis,
Jeux,
Prélude à l’après,
Rossignol,
Pulcinella and numerous others. As we reach volume 9 the music
becomes somewhat less self-evident: Milhaud’s
Le train bleu,
Sauguet’s
La chatte and, the most well-known of the trio,
Tommasini’s delightful
Good-humoured Ladies, based on Scarlatti
keyboard sonatas.
Those anticipating Latin Americana or Jazz from Milhaud’s 1923
ballet score will be in for a disappointment. This is the composer in
his most unashamedly relaxed mode. He completed the score of the Blue
Train - the famous luxury train that ran from Paris to the Côte
d’Azur - in just one month. At times Milhaud courts the world
of operetta in his little sketch scenes. Much is playful and also wittily
orchestrated, not least the thinning chamber sonorities he conjures
up for the eighth scene. Dapper, sometimes cocksure - as suits the choreography
- this is an unaffected, undemanding score. I’d have had little
idea it was by Milhaud; only some of the trumpet and percussion writing
in the second scene, the
Entrée de Perlouse gives some
clues.
Tommasini’s
The Good Humoured Ladies adapts those Scarlatti
keyboard sonatas with dexterity and charming, apposite qualities. Tommasini
wasn’t ashamed to orchestrate with a degree of ebullience and
also to imbue the music with warm string textures. His short ballet
score only lasts sixteen minutes or so, but ends on a high with a vibrant
Presto keyboard adaptation.
Henri Sauguet’s
La chatte is a ballet score dating from
1927. In an overture and seven scenes it charts the somewhat fey fortunes
of a young man, a young woman and a cat. Metamorphosis, Greek-style,
is the name of the game and Love is the aim. The young Sauguet provides
elegant, undemonstrative music, having the confidence lightly to texture
and characterise some scenes. Again, it’s hardly earth-shaking
stuff but is very competently written.
Conductor Robert Reimer directs well and there’s sufficient orchestral
energy and colour on display to keep admirers of the composers happy.
Jonathan Woolf
