Disc Details

Contents

Reviews

• ...this suite drawn from the score to the Royal Ballet’s first full-length ballet for 20 years is a blast [...] Themes associated with specific characters are invariably memorable and intelligently developed. The suite’s opening is entrancing – a hazy dreamscape, overlaid with glittering percussion. Everything is beautifully judged – the Cheshire Cat’s music is strangely undefinable and teeters on the edge of invisibility, the purring woodwinds giving the game away. The Mad Hatter’s tea party’s muted trumpets suggest a music-hall turn. The ballet’s apotheosis briefly implies that we’re going to get something grandiose along the lines of Daphnis and Chloe, before Talbot wraps things up sweetly and calmly [...] This is real music – witty, unpretentious and clever.
  Graham Rickson, theartsdesk.com, 26 January 2013
•