Just over a couple of years ago I was most pleasantly surprised by a Naxos CD offering suites from three modern ballet scores commissioned by the Northern Ballet Theatre (3/96). Of the three, I found Philip Feeney’s Cinderella especially agreeable. Since then Naxos have released a CD of the same composer’s Dracula, and now here are similarly extended passages from his most recent ballet score, a setting of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s a suitably raw-boned score, full of bold, dramatic splashes of colour to evoke the stark grandeur of Paris’s great cathedral and the human tragedy taking place around and above it. The choral finale to Act 2 is especially powerful. The music is closely geared to the action, but the commendably detailed, well-cued synopsis helps the listener get the best out of the work.
Paul Reade’s Far from the Madding Crowd is likewise a successor to ballets by the same composer already on CD. His Hobson’s Choice – ASV, 11/93 – was a big hit for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet in 1989, and his own Cinderella has also received extended CD coverage (again on ASV). The present Hardy setting is predictably less starkly dramatic than the Feeney score, more gently evocative of its rural setting, and altogether more readily accessible, with opulent orchestral effects, more intensely romantic, consistently lyrical and richly tuneful. It even uses folk melodies, played by an on-stage ‘folk-fiddler’, that are taken from collections at Dorchester’s county museum in Hardy’s own hand. The documentation here is even more detailed, though this is a ballet that can stand on its own feet and should appeal readily enough to all lovers of light music. The sadness is that it proved Reade’s last ballet score, since shortly after it opened he was diagnosed as suffering from lymphoma, from which he died in June 1997 aged 54.
If the Reade is the disc I would more readily recommend for undemanding but attractive listening, the Feeney appeals no less for the boldness of its invention. Both represent generous, superbly executed souvenirs for those with the good fortune to experience the two ballets in the theatre.'