Ballet Music by Lord Berners on Naxos

courtesy of Naxos of America

About a month ago Naxos released an album of two ballet scores composed by Lord Berners. To be fair, this is actually a reissue of a Marco Polo album, which was released at the end of January of 1996. It is also worth noting, at the outset, that the composer had, indeed, inherited the right to sit in the House of Lords, his full title being Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners. He may have been known for his eccentricities, but his breeding was not one of them.

The earlier of the ballet scores was composed in 1930 for one of the revues prepared by the English impresario Charles B. Cochran. The title of work was “Luna Park,” subtitled a “fantastic ballet in one act.” This was also one of the earlier choreographic efforts of George Balanchine, working with a scenario conceived by Boris Kochno. The booklet notes by Philip Lane summarizes the scenario as follows:

The scene is set in a freak pavilion in Luna Park. A showman enters and bows to the audience. He raises the curtain of the first of four niches revealing a man with three heads; in the second stands a three-legged juggler, complete with billiard balls, while in the third a one-legged ballerina is posing, and in the fourth, a man with six arms. All the ‘freaks’ dance in their respective niches, after which the showman bows to the audience, turning down the lights as he retires.

The showman gone, the four performers appear from behind the curtain of their niches, revealing themselves as physically normal (the ‘freaks’ were fakes) and proceed to dance an Adagio followed by individual variations for the ballerina (Alice Nikitina) and the six-armed man (Serge Lifar). In the end they collectively decide to leave the circus and go out into the wide world; and so, they silently slip away. The showman returns, intent on giving a second performance. He opens the curtain mechanically, without even looking, and reveals, in turn, two heads, a set of billiard balls, a solitary leg and four arms waving wildly. Laughter from the stalls prompts the showman to turn around and see what has happened. Horrified, he leaps into the niche behind him and pulls down the curtain.

In terminology that would only begin to emerge about 35 years later, this ballet might be described as “Petrushka” on an acid trip. In that context Berners’ score is relatively tame. Nevertheless, he certainly does justice to the scenario. By way of context, both Balanchine and Kochno were working for Cochran because Sergei Diaghilev had died on August 19, 1929, after which their “home” at the Ballets Russes went bankrupt. One might almost say that Balanchine’s experiences with Cochran prepared him for subsequent undertakings on Broadway, the most memorable of which was the musical On Your Toes.

The better known ballet on this album is “A Wedding Bouquet.” This ballet was created by Frederick Ashton in 1936, and the music included a choral setting of a text by Gertrude Stein. This was not Ashton’s first encounter with Stein, since he provided the choreography for Four Saints in Three Acts, the result of a close partnership between Stein and composer Virgil Thomson. (The Wikipedia page for this opera claims that Ashton was recruited after Balanchine turned down the job. Thomson’s autobiography is not as dismissive in writing about Balanchine, saying only “There was no possibility of using Balanchine, new to America and busy with his school.”)

I am in no position to compare Ashton’s work for Thomson’s score with his approach to Berners’ music. However, I suspect that the text for “A Wedding Bouquet” was not the product of a partnership that was as close as the one that resulted in the Four Saints libretto. Indeed, on the Naxos recording the music tends to obscure the words with textures far thicker than those encountered in Thomson’s music. All of the music on the album is performed by the RTÉ Sinfonietta, one of the “house ensembles” for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the national broadcaster of Ireland. The conductor is Kenneth Alwyn, working with the RTÉ Chamber Choir prepared by Colin Mawby. My guess is that neither Alwyn nor the recording crew were prepared for doing justice to the eccentricities of Stein’s libretto, but it may well be that Berners was in the same boat.

The two ballet scores are separated by a short march. This was taken from a solo piano score that Lane discovered in the basement of Berners’ home. Lane’s booklet notes state that “it is unlikely that Berners saw the composition as a work for solo piano.” As a result, Lane prepared his own scoring for a brass ensemble for this brief selection.