All These Lighted Things

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet – excerpts; Ravel: Daphnis et Chloë Suite No. 2; Elizabeth Ogonek: All

These Lighted Things Antwerp Symphony Orchestra/ Elim Chan

Alpha ALPHA1038 71:07 mins

The booklet note announces this album as Elim Chan’s ‘own favourite choices from more than a century of ballet music’: a pleasant assignment I’m sure for the Antwerp orchestra’s principal conductor, though it’s not so easy to see why punters would regard the result as a really essential purchase. The best attraction is the 39-minute selection from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet score, dispatched with impressive loving care, especially in the tenderly emotional extracts describing the young Juliet and the couple’s last farewell. The other ballet warhorse, Ravel’s second Daphnis et Chloé suite, is delivered with its own aplomb, though compared to the aching beauties presented in the Prokofiev, conductor and musicians seem a little outside the notes, delivering the surface, but less of the soul.

In between comes the one novelty: not a ballet score per se, but as its subtitle announces, three short dances for orchestra. Written in 2017 by the American composer Elizabeth Ogonek during her time as resident composer with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, All These Lighted Things is a meretricious creation. Sounds and textures are fleetingly striking (plucked double-basses plus timpani, shards and shimmerings of abundant percussion), but they seem for display purposes only and never build into a work that merits a title taken from a poem by the Trappist monk and interfaith champion Thomas Merton or builds into something genuinely symphonic. The orchestra plays well enough, and is helped by the warm, clear recording. But we can all think of music that better deserves Elim Chan’s flair: music that genuinely cries out for dance as it spins an atmosphere, tells a story, moves gracefully, or kicks up its heels.

PERFORMANCE ★★★

RECORDING ★★★★