Revolting Rhymes & Marvellous Music

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Information

  • Musical work devised by the Magnard Ensemble in partnership with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate and Marvellous Children’s Charity
  • Credits:
    • “Little Red Riding Hood”
      • Composed by Paul Patterson
      • Adapted by Donald Sturrock
    • “Dirty Beasts”
      • Composted by Martin Butler
    • “The Three Little Pigs”
      • Composed by Paul Patterson
    • Musicians
      • Suzannah Watson, flute/piccolo
      • Mana Shibata, oboe
      • Joseph Shiner, clarinet/bass clarinet
      • Catriona McDermid, bassoon
      • Jonathan Farey, horn
      • Suling King, piano
    • Narrator: Rebecca Kenny
  • Performances:
    • World premiere at Wells Cathedral School, Somerset, 2013

For more information, see Music Link International. To hire, contact Edition Peters.


Description

The Magnard Ensemble with Rebecca Kenny are delighted to present their debut release Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music – an album continuing the celebration of the Roald Dahl centenary with suitably innovative and humorously engaging compositions. The featured composers expertly weave Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes into Marvellous Music in a programme that aims to thrill all who listen from children to adults, and novices to musical connoisseurs.


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Dirty Beasts

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Information

  • Musical work commissioned by Roald Dahl Foundation in 2013
  • Composed by British composer Benjamin Wallfisch
  • Libretto by Donald Sturrock
  • Includes:
    • “The Porcupine”
    • “The Pig”
    • “The Anteater”
    • “The Toad and the Snail”
  • Performances:
    • World premiere at Royal Festival Hall, London, 2013
      • Conducted by Benjamin Wallfisch
      • Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra

For more information, see Music Link International. To hire, contact Edition Peters.


Description

Dirty Beasts is the newest of the Roald Dahl Orchestral Commissions and was first performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013. Described as a “A major new name on the new music horizon” by Humphrey Burton (BBC Radio 3), Benjamin Wallfisch was the ideal choice to set these wonderfully whacky poems.


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Cinderella

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Information

  • Musical work commissioned by Roald Dahl Foundation in 2003
  • Composed by Russian composer Vladimir Tarnopolsi
  • Libretto by Donald Sturrock
  • Performances:
    • World premiere at Barbican, London, 2003
      • Conducted by Peter Ash
      • Performed by London Schools Symphony Orchestra
    • Russian premiere at Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2015 (details)
      • Conducted by Ivan Stolbov
      • Performed by The Mariinsky Youth Orchestra and Children’s Chorus

For more information, see Music Link International. To hire, contact Edition Peters.


Description

Cinderella is an ambitious addition to the canon of Roald Dahl music commissions. It is principally scored for young players and singers, but there is also an optional “add-on” professional ensemble element. The work has been designed to be uniquely flexible to the requirements of schools and youth orchestras and can be presented in a variety of forms – from choruses with narrator and piano, to the full version with professional ensemble, string orchestra and flexiband.


Jack and the Beanstalk

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Information

  • Musical work commissioned by Roald Dahl Foundation in 1996
  • Composed by Latvian composer Georgs Pelecis
  • Libretto by Donald Sturrock
  • Performances:
    • World premiere at Royal Festival Hall, London, December 1996
      • Conducted by Peter Ash
      • Performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
      • Cast: Danny DeVito, Joanna Lumley and Simon Callow
    • US premiere at Ujima Theatre, Buffalo, New York, 1999

For more information, see Music Link International. To hire, contact Edition Peters.


Description

Jack and the Beanstalk was premiered in the Royal Albert Hall in December 1996 to a packed and excited audience of 6,000 people, with an all-star cast including Danny DeVito, Joanna Lumley and Simon Callow. The piece was broadcast nationally on Classic FM. It is based on Roald Dahl’s version of a traditional fairy-tale from his comic verse collection, Revolting Rhymes. The music is by the Latvian Georgs Pelecis whose work has been championed by many distinguished musicians including Gidon Kremer and Alexei Lyubimov.


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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

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Information

  • Musical work commissioned by Roald Dahl Foundation in 1994
  • Composed by Jamaican composer Eleanor Alberga
  • Libretto by Donald Sturrock
  • Performances:
    • World premiere at Royal Festival Hall, London, 1994
    • Conducted by Frans Welser-Möst
    • Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
    • Cast: Griff Rhys Jones, Geraldine James
  • Buy this CD:

For more information, see Music Link International. To hire, contact Edition Peters.


Description

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was premiered in London in 1994. It is adapted from Roald Dahl’s subversive version of the well-known fairy tale from his collection of comic verse, Revolting Rhymes. It was performed by the London Philharmonic in a semi-staged version conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, and a cast including Griff Rhys Jones and Geraldine James. It has been revived in concert versions several times since then. The music, by the remarkable Jamaican composer, Eleanor Alberga, is full of drama and magic.


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The Three Little Pigs

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Information

  • Musical work commissioned by The Roald Dahl Foundation in 2003
  • Composed by British composer Paul Patterson
  • Libretto by Donald Sturrock
  • Performances:
    • World premiere at Basel, Switzerland, 21st Mar 2004
      • Conducted by Howard Griffiths
      • Performed by Basel Symphony Orchestra
      • Narrator: Sandra Studer
    • UK premiere at Royal Festival Hall, London, England, 2005
      • Conducted by Alexander Briger
      • Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
  • Buy this CD:

For more information, see Music Link International. To hire, contact Josef Weinberger Ltd.


Description

The Roald Dahl Foundation’s musical versions of the Revolting Rhymes end as they began with a commission from Paul Patterson, which was premiered in Basel in 2004, by the Basel Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Howard Griffiths. Roald Dahl’s version of The Three Little Pigs is subversive in the extreme and contains a series of dark, gruesome and outrageously comic twists. Its first performances drew rapturous applause from its Swiss audiences and glowing reviews from the press.


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Little Red Riding Hood

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Information

  • Musical work commissioned by Roald Dahl Foundation in 1992
  • Composed by British composer Paul Patterson
  • Libretto by Donald Sturrock
  • Performances:
    • World premiere at Royal Festival Hall, London, 1st Nov 1992
      • Conducted by Frans Welser-Möst
      • Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
      • Narrators: Julie Walters, Benjamin Luxon and Stephen Powell
    • Roald Dahl Gala Concert, King’s Place, London, December 2008
      • Conducted by Peter Ash
      • Performed by pianists Aleksandar Madzar and Julien Libeer, and Joan Rodgers (soprano)
      • Narrator: Geraldine James
  • Movies:
  • Buy this CD:

For more information, see Music Link International. To hire, contact Josef Weinberger Ltd.


Description

From Paul Patterson’s website:

The original suggestion, from the author’s widow, was for a setting of a group of his much-loved Revolting Rhymes. Donald Sturrock, who had made a film about Dahl in 1985 and became a friend of the family, volunteered to adapt the text. Then, by great good fortune, a script Dahl had written for a possible television adaptation, using puppets, of one of the Rhymes was found: his inspired re-telling of the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Sturrock realised that this could form the basis of a single longer work, and devised a text in which Dahl’s original verses were augmented by prose dialogue and narration.

This is the text which Paul Patterson has set as a concert piece, lasting a little under half an hour, for three speakers (or one) and orchestra. The words are spoken freely against the orchestral background, without any attempt to notate exact rhythms for the verse – something Dahl disliked in previous settings of his words. The orchestra at the beginning becomes an Enchanted Forest, through which the Narrator makes his way to begin the story. Thereafter it illustrates the narrative, with themes to match the characters and the action, in the popular tradition of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Poulenc’s Babar the Elephant.

The music is straightforward, easy to follow and, the composer says, “very tuneful – amazingly so for me”. But it is certainly not without its incidental delights for listeners of all ages: the little bursts of ‘avant-garde’ free-time notation for the thunderstorm near the beginning and, later on, for a death scene; the musical menu of possibilities for the wolf’s lunch, in the course of which Wagner’s Isolde is scandalously identified as a ‘juicy cow’; Grandma’s doorbell, which has unexpected classical aspirations; the representation of a wolf’s burp by the percussion instrument called a ‘lion’s roar’; and what Patterson calls the ‘cat-walk’ music for Little Red Riding Hood’s final appearance. Above all, in this story which hinges on characters pretending to be other characters, there is a great deal of ingenuity in the way that the themes associated with one character similarly impersonate those of another. But then, as the Narrator says near the beginning, in the Forest, “appearances can be very, very deceptive. Nothing is ever quite what it seems….”


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