GRAMOPHONE Review: Sleeping Beauty – A Dramatic Symphony: Baltic Sea Philharmonic Orchestra/Järvi

Sleeping Beauty – A Dramatic Symphony? Alarm bells start to ring. One of the greatest classical ballets in the repertoire – some might say the greatest – surely needs no reinvention. And however well you think you can tell the story symphonically in 70 minutes, the precious and delicately balanced relationship between music and dance is not just important, it’s integral.

So what exactly has Kristjan Järvi done to the score that even apprentice balletomanes might blanch at? Well, this is essentially an ‘unpick and restitch’ job, a compressed and reshaped narrative patched from an elaborate framework where the storytelling might be expanded or paused to take in the colour and cast of any given scene. Järvi has even invented titles for non-titled numbers to act as ‘signposts’ in the unfolding narrative. It’s all sequential but some of the abridging, the foreshortening of numbers is inelegant (repeats are there for a reason) and in some cases plain brutal.

Any disc of Sleeping Beauty which fails to present the ‘Rose Adagio’ in its entirety – perhaps even make it the centrepiece of the reimagining – gets pretty short shrift from me. It is one of the great examples of almost pornographically passionate music allied to poised, balanced, refined movement and Järvi reduces it to a truncated climax. Likewise the ‘Panorama’ and the feverishly dramatic climax to Act One.

Honestly I would much rather have complete ‘highlights’ than Järvi’s streamlining. And whilst the rhythmic profile of the playing is as keen as you like and the many showy instrumental solos elegantly taken by Järvi’s excellent Baltic Sea Philharmonic (played from memory for maximum freedom and flexibility) tempi are almost uniformly on the brisk side – presumably for maximum narrative drive though I am inclined to be less charitable and suggest that they also speed over and disguise the joins. Sorry, it’s just not for me.