Tom Sawyer

Manda tu crítica

 

While it is the score for a ballet, its sound is more redolent of a Broadway show than a classical concert. Don’t think of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake or Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Instead, think of Richard Rodgers’ “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” from On Your Toes or “Laurey Makes Up Her Mind” – the famous “Dream Ballet” from Oklahoma!
From the opening strains, it is filled with what Stephen Sondheim famously referred to as “hum-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mable melodies.” The melodic lines that Yeston uses all seem very much as if they should have words attached. Indeed, they sound as if they were composed either to a set of lyrics or to be set to poetic words. As each new “song” spins out, you wonder just what the lyric would have been.
The music, however, is more than strong enough to stand on its own. Yeston always was a master melodist and the scores he wrote for shows all have lush, lovely and lively music. The same is true here, but there is the added aspect that it all is danceable, composed to support a ballet choreographer working not with a play with words or a musical with dialogue and songs but a scene by scene scenario.

That scenario – by Yeston as well – divides the story into three acts totaling thirty-seven scenes, from the famous opening where Tom talks his boyhood friends into doing most of the work painting his aunt’s fence to an oh-so-theatrical finale as Tom, Becky Thatcher and Huck Finn join the pantheon of American mythical heroes and heroines.

Yeston has never been confined to the normal occupations of Broadway composer and lyricist. He composed such pieces of (you should pardon the expression) “Serious Music” as a choral symphony and a concerto for cello. He was Dr. Yeston to his students at Yale, and he lays claim to the authorship of well-respected books on musical theory as well as Tony winning Broadway scores.
There also have been ballets composed to be performed as part of Broadway shows. In addition to those mentioned above, there is Harold Arlen’s “Civil War Ballet” composed for the musical Bloomer Girl in 1944 and Ben Bagley found seven ballets from shows by Jule Styne, Harold Arlen, Hugh Martin, Harry Warren, Cole Porter, Sigmund Romberg and Johnny Mercer to record on his Painted Smiles Records. (They were High Button Shoes, Jamaica, Look Ma, I’m Dancin’, Shangri-La, Can-Can, The Girl in Pink Tights and Li’l Abner.)

Yeston’s ballet was given its world premiere two years ago by the Kansas City Ballet. That might have been the end of it, had it not been for Martin West of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Tommy Krasker of PS Classics and Grammy Award winning record producer Adam Abeshouse.
They managed to get the piece recorded with West’s superb orchestra (of no fewer than seventy six players – forty of them string players!) earlier this year in George Lukas’ Skywalker Studios in California’s Marin County. West says that Skywalker is a superb venue for recording practically any kind of music because the room is so “tunable.” For this recording, it provided wide, spacious ambiance while allowing Abeshouse to capture individual details of the very active score with clarity.

Yeston attended the recording sessions which used not only the full San Francisco Ballet Orchestra but about 35 members of the San Francisco Boys Chorus for the wordless choral segments.
The result is a superbly listenable album that is atmospheric and entrancing throughout its nearly hour and a half.