Arthur Bliss - Checkmate; Mêlée Fantasque (David Lloyd-Jones)

Information

Composer: Arthur Bliss

1. Mêlée Fantasque
2. Checkmate, ballet: Prologue - The Players: Moderato maestoso
3. Checkmate, ballet: Dance of the Red Pawns: Allegro spirito scherzando
4. Checkmate, ballet: Dance of the Four Knights: Allegro moderato sempre robustamente
5. Checkmate, ballet: Entry of the Black Queen: L'istesso tempo
6. Checkmate, ballet: The Red Knight's Mazurka: Moderato giojosamente
7. Checkmate, ballet: Ceremony of the Red Bishops: Largamente (misticamente)
8. Checkmate, ballet: Entry of the Red Castles: Allegro molto deciso
9. Checkmate, ballet: Entry of the Red King and Queen: Grave
10. Checkmate, ballet: The Attack: Allegro impetuoso e brillante
11. Checkmate, ballet: The Duel: Maestoso moderato e molto appassionato
12. Checkmate, ballet: The black Queen Dances: Allegro dispettoso
13. Checkmate, ballet: Finale - Checkmate: Andante poco sostenuto - Allegro vivace e feroce

Royal Scottish National Orchestra
David Lloyd-Jones, conductor
Date: 2004
Label: Naxos
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.557641

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Review

Bargain Bliss, and yet another feather in the caps of Lloyd-Jones and Naxos

Bliss composed Checkmate (the first of his four ballets) at the behest of dancer and choreographer Ninette de Valois to mark the Vic-Wells Ballet’s inaugural visit to Paris in June 1937. A keen chess player, Bliss devised the scenario himself, the original idea having germinated some 14 years before in a dinner conversation with the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina. Lasting some 53 minutes, it’s a mightily impressive achievement, scored with sumptuous skill and crammed full of first-rate, colourful invention, much of which will already be familiar from the six-movement concert suite. All the more surprising, then, that Checkmate had to wait until May 2001 for its first complete recording, an enjoyably trim and spirited effort courtesy of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Barry Wordsworth’s alert and idiomatic lead.

Now comes an account – in some ways even more compelling – from Naxos stalwarts David Lloyd-Jones and the RSNO, who respond with a commendable polish and ebullient swagger that excite admiration. Both conductors know this score inside-out but Lloyd-Jones’s characteristically lucid conception possesses just that crucial bit more dramatic tension, expressive scope and thrust – and how pliantly he moulds those ravishing melodic tendrils in ‘Entry of the Black Queen’ (where there’s some particularly disarming wind playing). Some occasionally raucous brass sonorities aside, the engineering is enormously vivid, the slightly unflattering acoustic appropriately akin to that of the theatre-pit.

The Mêlée fantasque (written in 1921 in memory of the painter Claude Lovat Fraser, who died tragically young) makes a delightful curtain-raiser, with Lloyd-Jones extracting just that bit more vitality from this by turns exuberant and touching dance-poem than the composer (always an accomplished interpreter of his own music). At such a tempting price, one to snap up without delay.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: ****
MusicWeb International  BARGAIN OF THE MONTH
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Nov05/Bliss_Checkmate_8557641.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Dec05/Bliss_Checkmate_8557641.htm
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/n/nxs57641a.php
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/sep/16/classicalmusicandopera.shopping1
http://www.allmusic.com/album/sir-arthur-bliss-checkmate-complete-ballet-m%C3%AAl%C3%A9e-fantasque-mw0001854197
http://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.557641&languageid=EN
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bliss-Checkmate-M%C3%AAl%C3%A9e-Fantasque-Arthur/dp/B000AMMSMG

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Arthur Bliss (2 August 1891 – 27 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. After the First World War, he quickly became known as an unconventional and modernist composer, but within the decade he began to display a more traditional and romantic side in his music. In Bliss's later years, his work was respected but was thought old-fashioned, and it was eclipsed by the music of younger colleagues such as William Walton and Benjamin Britten. Since his death, his compositions have been well represented on record, and many of his better-known works remain in the repertoire of British orchestras.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Bliss

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David Lloyd-Jones (born 19 November 1934 in London) is a British conductor. He is also an editor and translator, especially of Russian operas. In 1978, Lloyd-Jones founded and became the first Music Director of Opera North, forming its orchestra, the English Northern Philharmonia (now the Orchestra of Opera North), of which he became Artistic Director. In the recording studio, Lloyd-Jones has specialised in British and Russian music, often for Hyperion and Naxos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lloyd-Jones_(conductor)

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