Music for the Derek Deane Production for English National Ballet
In 1995, English National Ballet commissioned a score for a full length ballet, based on Lewis Carroll’s immortal masterpiece, Alice in Wonderland. The one stipulation and challenge was for a score to be based on the music of Tchaikovsky. Carl Davis accepted the challenge and a smash hit was born!
The centre of the score is derived from Tchaikovsky’s Album for the Young. Davis also drew on Tchaikovsky’s Theatre Music, Tone Poems and Operas, as well as the beautiful waltz from the Fifth Symphony for The Garden of Living Flowers. This highly successful production was revived many times, including performances at the Company’s London Coliseum seasons. Pittsburgh Ballet in the U.S. has already staged the ballet in April, 2008 and plan to continue performing it. ENB was invited to take the ballet to Hong Kong in March, 2009 and plans a further U.K. tour in 2010.
Alice in Wonderland marks the launch of the Carl Davis Collection. There are four projects planned for release in 2009: Alice in Wonderland; the prize-winning soundtrack to Hannah Davis and David Conolly’s feature film The Understudy; music for the BBC TV series Cranford and the ballet Cyrano commissioned from Carl Davis by The Birmingham Royal Ballet, choreographed by David Bintley and premiered in 2007. This ballet will go on a national tour including Sadler’s Wells in Autumn 2009.
The Carl Davis Collection has far-reaching plans to produce all major works on both CD and DVD of the compositions of Carl Davis. The Repertoire for the following two years is already in preparation.
