Sandpaper Ballet Mark Morris

Martin Outram (Viola) and Julian Rolton (piano) play all of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams for viola and piano. Mark Padmore (tenor) joins them to record Four Hymns for Tenor, Viola and Piano.

This 2008 live recording with the London Symphony Orchestra is Valery Gergiev's 2nd complete recording of Prokofiev's ballet Romeo & Juliet, the 1st being a 1991 Philips release with the Kirov Orchestra. This performance, like his 1st, is notable for its refinement & lyricism. It's perhaps surprising that Gergiev, known for the wildness & ferocity of his performances of other Prokofiev works, like The Fiery Angel, shows such restraint here. Gergiev clearly understands the ballet as a work in which Prokofiev, writing originally for the Bolshoi, a theater known for its conservatism (although that production was canceled), tailored his score to follow in the tradition of the 3 great Tchaikovsky ballets.

This 2008 live recording with the London Symphony Orchestra is Valery Gergiev's second complete recording of Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, the first being a 1991 Philips release with the Kirov Orchestra. This performance, like his first, is notable for its refinement and lyricism. It's perhaps surprising that Gergiev, known for the wildness and ferocity of his performances of other Prokofiev works, like The Fiery Angel, shows such restraint here.

Fortunately, all this attention doesn't seem to have fazed the sandpaper-voiced singer; despite the guest list, BUBBLEGUM is as dirty, gritty, and raw as anything in his catalog.

The world premiere of Nixon in China in October 1987 inaugurated a fresh era in American opera. The piece boldly carved out new territory by treating recent American history as suitably mythic operatic material. Skeptics thought this could result only in a trendily pop art-style ridicule of well-known political icons, but it turned out to be as valid a choice as Wagner’s dysfunctional gods or the tormented passions of verismo lovers. Years after the opera’s initial run at the Houston Grand Opera, Nixon is now recognized as a 20th-century masterpiece… —Thomas May

Matthew Bourne’s SLEEPING BEAUTY sees the choreographer return to the music of Tchaikovsky to complete the trio of the composer’s ballet masterworks that started in 1992 with Nutcracker! and, most famously, in 1995, with the international hit Swan Lake. Bourne takes this date as his starting point, setting the Christening of Aurora, the story’s heroine, in the year of the ballets first performance; the height of the Fin de siècle period when fairies, vampires and decadent opulence fed the gothic imagination. As Aurora grows into a young woman, we move forwards in time to the more rigid, uptight Edwardian era; a mythical golden age of long Summer afternoons, croquet on the lawn and new dance crazes. Years later, awakening from her century long slumber, Aurora finds herself in the modern day; a world more mysterious and wonderful than any Fairy story!