Peacock Theatre, 30 March 2018

Swan Lake, the latest abridged ballet for young children danced by English National Ballet School students, filled the Peacock Theatre to bursting on a wet, cold Good Friday afternoon and that’s splendid to see. I wish more family groups included dads, uncles and grandpas but it’s still terrific to attract such a large, enthusiastic audience and I’m sure that will continue to be the case as the production tours.

Choreographed by Antonio Castilla, this show features some fine dancing by some of the thirty five students in the group. Each is profiled in the programme but they are not identified as dancing specific characters because they switch roles and they don’t all appear at every performance.

The Act 2 set pieces – the Spanish, Hungarian and Italian dances – are memorable. The two girls who did the Italian dance at the performance I saw had a real lightness of touch which highlighted the humour. We also had a very promising Siegfried whose leaps were youthfully spectacular and a truly graceful Odette who several times swanned her way right across the stage en pointe with watery arms waving and at one point managed to pirouette for around twenty bars of music.

As always the real star of the show is Tchaikovsky’s gloriously expressive music. Because My First Swan Lake runs for only 90 minutes including interval, the music, which is pre-recorded, has to be cut and arranged. Gavin Sutherland has generally done quite well with it but there are one or two moments of clumsy abruptness as we switch from one thing to another.

The inclusion of a narrator is a mistake.  Credit where it’s due though: Louise Calf, an actor, does a remarkably good job with the saccharine, rather moralistic script she’s been given. She is naturalistic and warm – but completely unnecessary. She has been directed to walk frequently from the downstage left corner across to the opposite spot, often in front of the action, and it’s very distracting. Moreover no one should be shouting over Tchaikovsky when he’s in dramatic fortissimo mode, as she often has to do. And as for delivering the crucial revelation when Odette, Odile and Sigfried all learn the truth in music-free tableau with just Calf’s voice – it’s a travesty.

Ballet is story telling in music and movement. It doesn’t need words added even for three year-olds. Neither should they be handed the subliminal message that it’s perfectly acceptable to talk over great music.

London Coliseum, Thursday 29 March 2018

Fiona Shaw’s enthusiastically energetic production of The Marriage of Figaro returns for its second revival with a cast as strong as any which have gone before. Performers here need to be singing actors, not simply good voices, if nothing else as a result of the constantly moving set and their need to ensure they are in the right place at the right time. Peter McKintosh’s designs bring us a world of inter-connecting rooms and corridors, peopled with servants aplenty. If I still retain doubts about the pervious and often insubstantial nature of the walls (looking remarkably like the cheapest plastic green-house double-glazing) the cast treat it all as solid and convince us in so doing.

Ashley Riches’ Count Almaviva is certainly in control of this edifice – or would be if he had a little less sex drive and a little more intelligence. His presence is impressive as is his singing, and there is no doubt he will try to get his own way on all occasions. Lucy Crowe’s Countess is a complex creation, gloriously sung and clearly torn in her feelings towards the Count, a tension which is turning her to drink. It is little touches like this which make the production so appealing and sensitive.

Thomas Oliemans’ Figaro has the extrovert good humour for the part and the instant changes of mood which need tempering by his partner Susanna – beautifully sung by Rhian Lois with a clear insight into the intelligence of her character.

Janis Kelly is a wily Marcellina and Keel Watson a bluff old cove as Bartolo, though his voice occasionally lacked projection. Katie Coventry made a very strong impression as Cherubino, convincingly boyish and gauche but radiant in voice in her two arias.

Martyn Brabbins drives the whole piece strongly from the pit, maintaining good balance and moving through the recitatives to keep the dramatic pace alive.

I doubt if this will be the last revival of this production!

Mote Hall, Maidstone, Saturday 24 March 2018

Conventional programme planning need not be a problem when the works are well balanced and well played – as they were at the Mote Hall last night. A classical symphony, a romantic concerto and a symphony which lies somewhere between the two – not that the opening symphony was quite what the title might imply. Mozart’s Symphony No32 isn’t – a symphony that is. It is probably an overture, and quite a clever composition as the final section mirrors the opening. There was considerable delicacy in the playing, given that the orchestra was probably far larger than the composer had available to him at the time, but the central section needs that intimacy and certainly got it here.

Violinist Benjamin Baker is well known to the Maidstone audience after his fine Bruch last year but was an unexpected visitor on this occasion as a late, but very welcome, replacement for Bartosz Woroch who was rightly detained by more immediate family matters.

The Brahms violin concerto was a richly romantic contrast to the opening Mozart with its rapid changes of tempi and emotional impact. Benjamin Baker negotiates these with finesse and a subtle portamento which is always pleasing. The first movement cadenza brought with it the hinted swagger of a Hungarian dance before the warmth of the Adagio – with exceptional oboe playing from David Montague – and the clipped, tightly rhythmic finale. Happily he is due to return next season for the Tchaikovsky concerto.

After the interval we heard Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony which sits on the top of the hill looking back to the classical while peering into the romantic future. Some years ago Leonard Bernstein argued that it was quite possible to hear the sixth symphony as a classical work if one can ignore the titles added to the movements. This was certainly true of Brian Wright’s approach with its clean lines and clear sense of development. The strings had a wonderful sense of cantabile in the second movement without over-egging the romanticism.

The Scherzo starts off in classic form but the storm breaks the mould – almost literally given the intensity of Keith Price’s timpani playing, and the whine of the piccolo – giving way to the only developed musical line of the whole work in the final Allegretto. This was a very fine performance, musically well-paced as well as highly enjoyable.

The evening was a charity concert in aid of the Kent Community Foundation and the final concert of the season follows on Saturday 19^th May with works by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.  www.mso.org.uk