Wild Swans (ballet)

Last updated

Wild Swans is a 2003 ballet by Meryl Tankard with score by Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin.

Contents

Ballet

The story is based on the fairy tale "The Wild Swans" by Hans Christian Andersen and tells the tale of Eliza, a princess whose wicked-witch stepmother has changed Eliza's eleven brothers into swans. Eliza must knit magic shirts from stinging nettles in order to break the spell and transform her brothers back into human form. With its basis in a fairy tale, the 90-minute ballet follows in the tradition of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker and Swan Lake , with ballet scores by Russian-born composers Prokofiev and Stravinsky also acknowledged influences. [1]

The ballet was commissioned by the Australian Ballet and the Sydney Opera House. The score was completed in 2002 in collaboration with choreographer Meryl Tankard, who had also worked with Kats-Chernin on part of the opening ceremony for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. [1] It was given its premiere by the Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House on 29 April 2003.

Suite

Kats-Chernin arranged a 12-movement concert suite from the ballet score. [2] This was recorded in 2004 by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ola Rudner, with soprano Jane Sheldon, and released on the ABC Classics label along with the composer's Piano Concerto[ clarification needed ] and the orchestral composition Mythic (2004). The 30-minute suite features prominent parts for the soprano soloist, percussion, in particular the xylophone, and alto saxophone.

The suite was given its Australian concert premiere on 18 May 2008, by Matthew Krel conducting the SBS Radio and Television Youth Orchestra with soprano Simone Easthope at the Verbrugghen Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. [3]

Movements

  1. Green Leaf (2:39)
  2. Eliza Aria (3:17)
  3. Brothers (1:50)
  4. Wicked Witch (1:51)
  5. Magic Spell Tango (3:42)
  6. Good Fairy (3:16)
  7. Knitting Nettles (3:17)
  8. Darkness in the Forest (3:43)
  9. Eliza and the Prince (3:55)
  10. Glow Worms (1:28)
  11. Mute Princess (3:50)
  12. Transformation (3:59)

Lloyds TSB advertisement

The "Eliza Aria" recording featuring the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Jane Sheldon was chosen for use in a series of television and cinema advertisements for British bank Lloyds TSB under the tagline "For the Journey", launched in January 2007. The adverts were created by agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R, and feature animations by Studio AKA.

They follow the fortunes of a couple who meet on a futuristic-looking bullet train, called The Black Horse, after Lloyds' logo, through to their retirement. Following the initial minute-long advert, further 30-second instalments were aired, each advertising a different financial product. The touching animations combined with Kats-Chernin's music caught the public's imagination, and brought the music to attention in the United Kingdom and further afield.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgil Thomson</span> American composer and critic (1896–1989)

Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark-Anthony Turnage</span> English composer (born 1960)

Mark-Anthony Turnage is an English composer of contemporary classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elena Kats-Chernin</span> Australian composer and pianist (born 1957)

Elena Davidovna Kats-Chernin is a Soviet-born Australian composer and pianist, best known for her ballet Wild Swans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boris Blacher</span> German composer (1903–1975)

Boris Blacher was a German composer and librettist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1</span> Suite by Levon Atovmyan based on music by Dmitri Shostakovich

The Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 is a suite in eight movements arranged by Levon Atovmyan after 1956, based on music by Dmitri Shostakovich. An editorial error in the tenth volume of the Shostakovich collected works edition published by Muzyka in 1984 resulted in the Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 being misidentified as the "Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2" or "Jazz Suite No. 2". The score was first published with the correct name in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berthold Goldschmidt</span> German Jewish composer

Berthold Goldschmidt was a German Jewish composer who spent most of his life in England. The suppression of his work by Nazi Germany, as well as the disdain with which many Modernist critics elsewhere dismissed his "anachronistic" lyricism, stranded the composer in the wilderness for many years before he was given a revival in his final decade.

Lera Auerbach is a Soviet-born Austrian-American classical composer, conductor and concert pianist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Benjamin</span> Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher

Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rumba (1938) and of the Storm Clouds Cantata, featured in both versions of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man who Knew Too Much, in 1934 and 1956.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Wild Swans</span> Short story by Hans Christian Andersen

"The Wild Swans" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a princess who rescues her 11 brothers from a spell cast by an evil queen. The tale was first published on 2 October 1838 in Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children. New Collection. First Booklet by C. A. Reitzel in Copenhagen, Denmark. It has been adapted to various media including ballet, television, and film.

Alla Pavlova is a Russian composer, born and initially raised in Vinnitsa in Ukraine. She and her family moved to Moscow in 1961, and she then moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1990, where she has settled. She is best known for her symphonic work.

Meryl Tankard is an Australian dancer and choreographer who has a wide national and international reputation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eliza Aria</span>

Eliza Aria is an operatic vocalise from the ballet Wild Swans, composed by Elena Kats-Chernin. The piece was first recorded by soprano Jane Sheldon and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and released on the ABC Classics label.

Wild Swans is a 1991 autobiographical novel by Jung Chang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Conyngham</span> Australian composer and academic (born 1944)

Barry Ernest Conyngham,, is an Australian composer and academic. He has over seventy published works and over thirty recordings featuring his compositions, and his works have been premiered or performed in Australia, Japan, North and South America, the United Kingdom and Europe. His output is largely for orchestra, ensemble or dramatic forces. He is an Emeritus Professor of both the University of Wollongong and Southern Cross University. He is former Dean of the Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne.

Matthew Krel was a Russian-Jewish conductor who migrated to Australia and in 1988 founded the SBS Radio and Television Youth Orchestra, of which he was the chief conductor until his death. Like his Soviet friend, the composer Dmitry Kabalevsky, he was passionate about creating quality musical performance ensembles for young people. He was also profoundly influenced by Zoltán Kodály's philosophy.

Anna Clyne is an English composer, now resident in New York City, US. She has worked in both acoustic music and electroacoustic music.

Color Music is a suite of five different compositions for orchestra by American composer Michael Torke. The suite is well known for its association with the composer's synesthesia.

Jane Sheldon is a Sydney-born Australian soprano, largely based in New York City. She is an artistic associate at Sydney Chamber Opera.

The "Canon on a Russian Popular Tune" is an orchestral work by Igor Stravinsky composed in 1965. It is the composer's final completed score for orchestra and was composed in the summer of 1965 during work on his Requiem Canticles. Although originally intended as a valedictory tribute to Pierre Monteux, the published score makes no mention of this.

References

  1. 1 2 "Wild Swans (2002)" (composition details, composer's notes). Boosey & Hawkes . Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  2. ↑ "Wild Swans Suite (2002)" (composition details, composer's notes (identical to ballet)). Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  3. ↑ Elena Kats-Chernin's blog[ dead link ]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.