Lake l Lake

Une simple rencontre peut-elle guérir les plaies les plus profondes ?
Sarah et June sont les meilleures amies du monde depuis leur plus tendre enfance. Passionnées de musique, elles souhaitent entrer ensemble au conservatoire de Boston après leur bac.
Mais la mort tragique de Sarah remet tout en cause. Le monde de June s'écroule : elle ne veut plus entendre la moindre note de musique, renonce au conservatoire et quitte sa ville natale, direction Pine Lake ! …

Like much of Tchaikovsky's musical output, his ballet scores were often subject to criticism. This is certainly true of his first attempt at ballet, Swan Lake. Although still firmly rooted in the traditions of the day, Tchaikovsky certainly tried to move out on his own by making the score much more orchestra-based than most of his predecessors. This, of course, drew the ire of dancers and theater directors alike as the attention was taken away from the dancers and placed on the musicians. History shines more favorably on Tchaikovsky's independent streak, making him the first Russian composer whose ballet scores are played as stand-alone orchestral works, not to mention the fact that Tchaikovsky was unknowingly paving the way for a string of subsequent Russian ballet composers like Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

This is the second instalment in our series devoted to Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets. The first recording, of The Sleeping Beauty, was praised upon its release, described by a reviewer in American Record Guide as ‘one of the finest I’ve heard’. Here Neeme Järvi and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra present the complete version of Swan Lake, with the pre-eminent James Ehnes lending his magic to the violin solos. This was Tchaikovsky’s first full-length ballet, but its premiere in 1877, staged at Moscow’s Bolshoy Theatre, was by no means a resounding success. According to most accounts, the choreography was inept, the shabby sets and costumes were borrowed from other productions, and the orchestral playing was poor. Most ballet companies today base their productions on the 1895 revival by the distinguished choreographer Marius Petipa. Although this revival has been seen as more ‘danceable’, one may argue that the overall cuts and reordering ultimately destroyed Tchaikovsky’s ground plan of drama and tonality. Here we present Tchaikovsky’s original Bolshoy score of twenty-nine numbers across four acts, along with two supplementary numbers which Tchaikovsky provided not long after the premiere.

This recording of two masterful orchestral works by Sir Michael Tippett is fascinating and rewarding for many reasons, not least for the undeniable vividness of the music, the scintillating sonorities of the orchestration, and the vitality of the performances, but also for the utterly vibrant reproduction, presented in pristine DSD sound for this hybrid Super Audio CD from Chandos. This audiophile technology was intended for music of the widest dynamic range, depth, and variety of timbres, and Tippett's evocative and mysteriously shaded The Rose Lake (1991-1993) and his bright and vigorous Ritual Dances from The Midsummer Marriage (1946-1952) clearly provide the fullest possible experience of the large modern orchestra in scores of almost cinematic scope.

Excellent addition to any prog-rock music collection
ELP returned from an extended hiatus in 1977, sweetly oblivious to the fact that progressive rock was on the decline.