Boston Ballet Orchestra Conducted by Jonathan McPhee
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY (highlights)
(BOSTON BALLET RECORDS)

Following up on its 1995 Nutcracker disc, Boston Ballet has issued this highlight CD for The Sleeping Beauty, which it’s currently performing at the Wang Theatre. Although I’m sorry the company didn’t have the financial resources to record the complete ballet, this release is welcome, since there aren’t many highlight discs devoted entirely to Sleeping Beauty (most give you snippets of all three Tchaikovsky ballets) and Jonathan McPhee is one of the world’s better Tchaikovsky conductors.

Some quibbles about the packaging: superimposing Alex Lapshin and Pollyana Ribeiro on a rose background gives the CD a dated RCA Red Seal ’50s look, and NOWHERE are we told that what’s inside isn’t the complete ballet. On the back, too, the prologue and act one are run together, and the score numbers aren’t given, so you can’t tell what’s missing.

What is inside is reasonably generous, 67 minutes, but it doesn’t start auspiciously: the 16th notes at the third beat of the first bar aren’t altogether clear, and after stating the Carabosse theme, the Introduction jumps over the Lilac Fairy theme (these two should be indivisible) and goes right into the Marche. It’s also hard to understand why poor Breadcrumb is done out of her variation when the other five fairies have theirs — surely Boston Ballet could have managed another 60 seconds on the disc. Thereafter McPhee comes into his own, with lilting tempos (just a shade slower than usual) and seductive phrasing and plenty of room for the winds and percussion. High points include the first-act Garland Waltz and Rose Adagio and the third-act polonaise.

For the moment this release is on sale only at the Wang Center boutique (where Sleeping Beauty audiences will doubtless be happy to have a souvenir of what they heard in the theater), at the company’s Clarendon Street studio, and at its Web site (www.bostonballet.org). You can get the George Weldon/Philharmonia 77-minute highlight disc for half its $15 cost and the complete Antal Dorati/Royal Concertgebouw or John Lanchbery/Philharmonia recording for about the same money, but not McPhee’s insights or Boston Ballet’s natural, gratifying sound. I imagine Valery Gergiev’s Kirov highlight disc would give this a tussle, but I haven’t seen it around, and the complete Kirov performance runs three discs at full price.

Issue Date: May 10 - 16, 2001