It is hard to believe that Prokofiev's ballet music initially met with hostility from dancers. All his ballet scores sound gorgeously idiomatic, generously stocked with grand waltzes, searing pas de deux and spiky marches. If that sounds a touch predictable, that was, in part, intentional.
Cinderella was written in 1940, when the age of Soviet experimental ballet had passed; it was not intended to shock. There are even faint echoes of Rimsky-Korsakov's fairy-tale operas, especially in the fantastical glitter of Cinderella's arrival at the ball, and the delicate Amoroso. But Cinderella isn't a mere concession to Soviet conservatism. It contains all the hallmarks of Prokofiev's ballet style: motoric energy, waltzes and marches tinged with macabre violence, and unashamedly sumptuous melodies. Jac van Steen and the Hallé played it straight, choosing not to accentuate its grotesqueries, but rather emphasising its rich lyricism.
That approach worked well in the Prokofiev - but when applied to Stravinsky's Petrushka, it was deadening. Where Prokofiev's lavish score plays into an orchestra's hands, Petrushka needs to be brought to life with imagination. It is one of the most colourful, vital ballet scores ever composed, and yet Van Steen's smoothed-over approach made it sound pedestrian. The waltz sequence in scene two dragged unhappily along; what should have been a gloriously expansive return to fairground music was inexplicably lifeless. Though there were some excellent solos, from the wind in particular, the Hallé sounded rather world-weary, lacking the bite that gives this music its backbone.
One of the reasons that Ravel's Shéhérazade doesn't rank among singers' favourite works is its difficulty. The whimsical solo part in the first song, Asie, never settles on one style for more than a few bars. Lynne Dawson controlled its flighty narrative well, though she sounded far more at home in the reflective L'Indifférent and the delicate La Flûte Enchantée, further distinguished by Ian Mullin's lovely flute obligato. As with Petrushka, there was some fine playing here, but somehow Shéhérazade never came alive.
