RAVEL
L'enfant et les sortileges
NEDERLANDS DANS THEATER
PROKOFIEV
Peter and the Wolf
ROYAL BALLET
SCHOOL
ARTHAUS 100 102
[82
mins]
Crotchet
A combination which looks good in prospect - and I recall having enjoyed
each of these (separately) as videos shown on TV - but the pleasant-enough,
rather twee, London ballet school version of Peter and the
Wolf, choreographed by Matthew Hart, cannot hold a candle
to the genius of Jiri Kylian, whose
Black
& White was the single release which persuaded us that purchasing
a DVD machine really was worth-while. (The cover montage gives less than
a quarter of the picture space to the Ravel/Collette/Kylian as against its
much shorter companion!)
So I concentrate on L'enfant et les sortileges, which creates
real magic as a visual accompaniment to Lorin Maazel's recorded
performance with prestigious soloists and the Paris Orchestre National with
the Choeur & Maitrise of RTF. The sound is well balanced and the texts
by Collette are available in subtitles in the language of your choice, which
is a real bonus of the new system.
At first the dancing is attractive, but seems not so inventive as in Kylian's
Black & White, but gradually we come under the spell of
this tale about the chastisement of a naughty boy who finally shows his good
side by tending an injured squirrel, and the likelihood to develop into a
sympathetic, sensitive grown-up. There are complicated, athletic movements
to characterise pieces of furniture and tableware and the representation
of the mother is quite a coup de theatre. As with Kylian's other DVD, the
amount of fascinating detail in his staging and choreography encourages
re-viewing and there is no visual redudancy, as is inevitable in concerts
on video & DVD, of which I am still sceptical. Messiah, by forces
from King's College, Cambridge cond. Stephen Cleobury, from a church in Leiden
(in the same batch,
Arthaus
100 114) failed to captivate us, with the predictable and
repetitive shots of musicians and church.
For readers of S&H some DVDs will
be disappointing in their presentation, displaying minimal regard for the
music, even though this generally sounds well enough, given their dates of
recording. Space is poorly allocated in this booklet, given that the stories
are printed in full there, as well as to be followed on screen, even though
it is suggested that the Peter & the Wolf narration is actually
unnecessary and Jiri Kylian also gives a delightful spoken introduction
to L'enfant et les sortileges, which is substantially duplicated,
about its origin as a projected children's ballet and transformation into
opera over a ten year span; he tells us what it has meant to him and to his
dancers in terms of their (and our) childhoods. Recommendable despite short
measure - even with the Prokofiev too.
Peter Grahame Woolf
