Bliss: Checkmate & Mêlée Fantasque

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This is the only available version of the full ballet… almost all the music to the same high, full-blooded standard… The early Melée Fantasque is much more than a makeweight… Lloyd-Jones's... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2005 More…

Release Date: 30th Aug 2005
Catalogue No: 8557641
Label: Naxos
Length: 64 minutes

BBC Music Magazine

October 2005

Orchestral Choice
Gramophone Magazine

October 2005

Editor's Choice

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Bliss: Mêlée Fantasque

Work length12:16

$3.00

$3.85

Royal Scottish National Orchestra
David Lloyd-Jones

Bliss: Checkmate

Work length52:39

$14.00

$18.20

Royal Scottish National Orchestra
David Lloyd-Jones

I. Prologue - The Players: Moderato maestoso

Track length5:26

$1.00

$1.30

II. Dance of the Red Pawns: Allegro spirito scherzando

Track length2:25

$1.00

$1.30

III. Dance of the Four Knights: Allegro moderato sempre robustamente

Track length3:49

$1.00

$1.30

IV. Entry of the Black Queen: L’istesso tempo

Track length5:31

$1.00

$1.30

V. The Red Knight’s Mazurka: Moderato giojosamente

Track length3:37

$1.00

$1.30

VI. Ceremony of the Red Bishops: Largamente (misticamente)

Track length2:12

$1.00

$1.30

VII. Entry of the Red Castles: Allegro molto deciso

Track length2:24

$1.00

$1.30

VIII. Entry of the Red King and Queen: Grave

Track length1:45

$1.00

$1.30

XI. The Attack: Allegro impetuoso e brillante

Track length7:03

$2.00

$2.60

X. The Duel: Maestoso moderato e molto appassionato

Track length8:26

$2.00

$2.60

X. The Black Queen Dances: Allegro dispettoso

Track length3:42

$1.00

$1.30

XII. Finale - Checkmate: Andante poco sostenuto - Allegro vivace e feroce

Track length6:19

$1.00

$1.30

Reviews
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Reviews

October 2005

This is the only available version of the full ballet… almost all the music to the same high, full-blooded standard… The early Melée Fantasque is much more than a makeweight… Lloyd-Jones's tempos are faster than the composer's, but there's no lack of expansiveness in the elegiac slower episodes that punctuate the effervescent throng. Superbly alert and responsive playing from the RSNO make this disc a real bargain.

2010

Bliss composed Checkmate at the behest of dancer and choreographer Ninette de Valois to mark the Vic-Wells Ballet's inaugural visit to Paris in June 1937. A keen chess player, Bliss devised the scenario himself, the original idea having germinated some 14 years before in a dinner conversation with the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina.
Lasting some 53 minutes, it's a mightily impressive achievement, scored with sumptuous skill and crammed full of first-rate, colourful invention, much of which will already be familiar from the six-movement concert suite.
Now comes a compelling account of the complete ballet from David Lloyd-Jones and the RSNO, who respond with commendable polish and ebullient swagger. Lloyd-Jones's characteristically lucid conception possesses just that crucial bit more dramatic tension, expressive scope and thrust – and how pliantly he moulds those ravishing melodic tendrils in 'Entry of the Black Queen' (where there's some particularly disarming wind playing). Some occasionally raucous brass sonorities aside, the engineering is enormously vivid, the slightly unflattering acoustic appropriately akin to that of the theatre-pit.
The Mêlée fantasque (written in 1921 in memory of the painter Claude Lovat Fraser) makes a delightful curtain-raiser, with Lloyd-Jones extracting just that bit more vitality from this by turns exuberant and touching dance-poem than the composer (always an accomplished interpreter of his own music). A real bargain.

[the RSNO] respond with a commendable polish and ebullient swagger that excite admiration

Offer,Bliss: Checkmate & Mêlée Fantasque

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