Reviews

The production benefits from another outstanding bespoke score by Peter Salem that is lyrical, descriptive, diverse, and thoroughly enjoyable. Salem has aided the choreography by adding motifs to emphasise each main character, so that Lister’s relationship with Lawton is underscored by soft trumpet playing and the later relationship with Walker is represented through the romantic lyricism of the piano. It is one of the best new scores for ballet that I can recall, and the small orchestra, conducted by Daniel Parkinson, did a great job.

Peter Salem’s score is extraordinary, and I often found myself as lost in the music as I was in the dance. Composed for the Northern Ballet Sinfonia under conductor Daniel Parkinson, it pulls from Yorkshire and Scottish folk sounds and layers them over ambient, electronic textures. In a cinematic gesture, it enters like an opening title sequence where mood and attitude set the tone and then opens up into space and scope that never feels hemmed in by overworn phrases. In the scenes with the miners, a sharp percussive tone evokes a pickaxe striking rock, and the miners themselves, in boots with a clog-like heel-strike, add their own rhythm to the stage floor. When the rejection scene comes and Saeka Shirai’s Mariana is held at the edges of a ballroom, a haunting violin rises above the dampened sounds of the rest of the room, closing in the emotional space in one deft move. I have never heard a live orchestra make a room feel that particular shade of lonely.

Peter Salem’s driving cinematic score, a range of styles for the changing scenes, is as eloquent as the choreography and staging.

The specially commissioned score by Peter Salem, combining folk music tropes with soaring electronic and symphonic themes, is hugely evocative, serving the dance perfectly.

Peter Salem’s score not only drives the surging lesbian yearning in Anne’s story, but underscores Anne’s ruthless professional pursuits with punchy industrial beats – capturing her vulnerability and sensuousness as well as her resilience and brazenness.

The Salem score is an absolute cracker of brooding energy — drums and blaring brass at times, a troubled and oppressive wall of near silence at others, as when murder is afoot. It is brilliant and well delivered by the Dutch Ballet Orchestra under the baton of Koen Kessels.

The kitchen scene with rhythmically rattling pots and pans is an original group scene. It also blends seamlessly with the ominous composition of British film, television and dance composer Peter Salem, known for award-winning music for series such as Call the Midwife.

Koen Kessels, the new conductor of Het Balletorkest, lets the bass of string instruments growl like unleashed ghost appearances and drives a variation of threatening percussion from all the cracks of the orchestra box towards the stage. Moreover, all that vibrates in a harness of electronic audio tracks. Musically you feel and hear an exciting cocktail of lust for power and remorse.

The brand new production of Het Nationale Ballet can be read as a film with a fantastic soundtrack. On the original and electronic score of Peter Salem, which provides the ballet with an ominous tension, the drama of Lady Macbeth unfolds: the danced spin-off of William Shakespeare's text, made by choreographer Helen Pickett and director James Bonas.

The score itself is a masterful work. The textures and the tones offered rich and electrifying moments. Under the baton of superb Koen Kessel, Salem’s score is intensely punctuated with electronic and classical tones. It is the foundation of the ballet, upon which Pickett masterfully shapes her work.

Peter Salem’s score was incredible — it carried the tension and emotion of the story from start to finish, blending classical and modern sounds seamlessly. I felt like it was the perfect fit for the story .The music felt like the heartbeat of the ballet. I only wish there was a recording so we could revisit it.

Composer, Peter Salem, already well-known for his film and television scores (such as the jaunty Call the Midwife theme), gives us an original score that is energising and emotional. I was reminded of the first time I heard cinematic scores by Michael Nyman. Inspirational and unique sounds. There are standout signatures with percussive xylophone for the wonderful dancers playing the Chanel No. 5 fragrances, and haunting flute for the devilish Wertheimer and his suitcase full of cash.

Peter Salem’s imaginative score added atmosphere and impetus as the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra brought it to life last weekend under Jonathan McPhee’s baton.

For depth, though, we need to go to Salem’s score. It’s a monster of a thing, asking for the biggest orchestra ever fitted into QPAC’s Playhouse (three percussionists and two pianists gamely play from under the stage). There are also sampled and synthesised percussion sounds and some electronic manipulation and enhancement of the live musicians. It used to be that electronically produced sounds were considered something apart from an orchestra; even a little suspect. Now they are another important weapon in the armoury. As QB’s music director and chief conductor Nigel Gaynor has said, technology provides “a very effective means of using a far broader sound palate than a symphony orchestra [alone]”.

Gaynor conducts Camerata Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra in this mammoth undertaking, bringing to vivid life nightclubs from a century ago, frivolity and war, the seaside at Deauville where Chanel’s sailor look was born, a regimented workshop, the romance of a fragrance, the sophistication of a brand and more.

I went to Gaynor for greater detail about the orchestra and orchestration as unfortunately QB’s program for Coco Chanel didn’t include a music note. As well as the usual forces found in a conventional orchestra Salem’s kit includes vibraphone, large glockenspiel, woodblocks, shakers, tam tam, cowbell, a snare drum and metal plates being struck and amplified. QB principal pianist Roger Cui plays a grand piano while a second keyboardist, Yuko Yoshioka, is heard in various guises, including playing sampled sounds.

At the beginning of the ballet Yoshioka plays a detuned upright piano sound that acts as a wistful theme weaving through the ballet. In addition, the upright “is reminiscent of instruments in French (and European) nightclubs in 1920s and 1930s”, says Gaynor.

This is where the collage fashioned from Chanel’s life has real resonance.

Salem’s score is wonderfully modern and atmospheric.

Emma’s splendour, joy, self-centredness, cruelty and despair are captured by Peter Salem’s magnificent composition, as interpreted brilliantly by the National Arts Centre Orchestra.

Peter Salem’s original score is almost a character itself, whispering and thundering through a seamless series of mise-en-scènes to establish a strong rapport with the storyline and by extension the audience, listening enthralled in the dark.

The choreography and the music (score by Peter Salem, conducted by David Briskin with the NAC Orchestra,) work together flawlessly to drive the narrative forward and clearly put the audience into Emma’s state of mind.

Peter Salem’s original score is excellent. He is able to capture mood, and the motif of a ticking clock works well to express tedium. His swirling, romantic ballroom music, his menacing Lheureux sections, and his rapturous duet are wonderful. As they say, like hand to glove, score to story.

I loved Peter Salem's original score which creates an ethereal and haunting feel, crafting an auditory landscape setting the perfect tone for the performance. The inclusion of a ticking clock in the score is particularly effective, infusing each scene with a palpable sense of tension that keeps the audience captivated and on edge. The intricately designed soundscapes play a pivotal role in deepening the drama and emotional intensity of Emma's story, drawing the audience deeper into the heart of her turbulent world.

… . Indeed, the inception from, and increasingly inescapable sound of, the descamisados coming together as a force in the dance’s closing scene is so perfectly modulated in Salem’s score and Ochoa’s choreography that the audience can sense the ground trembling like an approaching political earthquake. 

Peter Salem's score, performed by just five musicians, propels the narrative while retaining key elements of the Latin sound … .  A production this sharp, transformative and fun renders any words written about it unsatisfactory. To understand it, just go see it. 

Much of that success comes in working with her longtime musical collaborator, Peter Salem, whose scores invest in the newness of original ballets with original music that deliver detailed musical landscapes custom made for Ochoa’s reimagined stories. TheirDoña Perón (2022) for Ballet Hispanico is a good example of how new music based on nostalgic and tango nuevo influences can feel like better accompaniment than actual contemporary tango adapted for the purpose.

The music, based on a revised tango quintet ensemble subtracts guitar and bass but adds percussion and cello to the core piano, violin, and bandoneon mix.  The music opens with a lengthy, brilliant overture that makes glancing connections to the best known of the Tangueidas from Paizzolla’s Tango: Zero Hour. It succeeds admirably on its own merits, becoming a kind of hybrid theater dance piece as well as a musical and cultural centering for Ochoa’s version of her story.

Doña Perón is highlighted by music composed by Peter Salem that reflects the time and place. Led by bandleader Hector del Curto and conductor Ahmed Alon, the composition expertly supports the dancing on stage, taking the ballet to the next level. 

Adding to the whole feel is Doña Perón’s melodious, rhythmic and scorching score, by composer Peter Salem. The music helps tell the narrative with passion and clarity. Salem, known for his work for ballet, TV, Film and theatre (Broken Wings, The Crucible, Streetcar Named Desire) manages to evoke a percussive, romantic warmth not unsimilar to Piazzolla’s “Libertango’s” passion and fury in Salem’s wall to wall musical score. It has been written for five-piece orchestra; Bandoneon, piano, percussion, violin, and cello which, in the overture, welcomes the audience with sultry Tango rhythms and melodies that help bring the mood clearly into focus carrying one into another time and place.

The percussive composition of Peter Salem, which is based on Mexican music genres, is as compelling as a film soundtrack.

… … Salem’s excellent bespoke score, performed by the Het Balletorkest under the direction of Matthew Rowe.

In a word, this new choreography by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa to music by Peter Salem is breathtaking… the ballet is a feast for the eyes and ears

Played live by the Scottish Ballet Orchestra, Peter Salem’s unsettling, detailed and carefully textured score underpins the dark narrative with a light-and-shade balance of bubbling, edgy percussion and zig-zagging strings, weighed-down with ominous bass legato – often rich and rhapsodic, but never murky or dense, and always descriptive.

Peter Salem’s score ingeniously intertwines solemn, liturgical sounds with rich melodies and discordant electronic passages, bringing to life the community’s fear of the supernatural, creating an other-worldliness. The low strings and percussion build unease and tension, then seamlessly evolve into rich, melodic accompaniments to the Proctor’s pas de deux. The incorporation of sound effects throughout, from familiar church and courtroom sounds to whispers, screams and bird calls, mirrors the fear of the encroachment of the supernatural into the community of Salem and the distrust among its population.

…this International Festival premiere is everything you want it to be: dramatically cogent, compact and clear, starkly handsome (the costumes are by Emma Kingsbury, who shares credit for the set with the chief lighting designer David Finn), superbly scored by a composer, who eerily happens to be named Peter Salem, and beautifully danced. In short, with this bewitchingly good touring production Scottish Ballet has a hit on its hands.

It’s all brilliantly realised by the company, and supported by a shattering score by the aptly named Peter Salem. With great skill he matches sound to action: a great clatter of drums for Proctor’s unleashed passion; a whomp of violins for the wild and whirring Walpurgis night dances in the woods; screeches of strings as people meet their fate.

Much atmosphere also comes from the pools of moody lighting (David Finn), but the most striking non-dance element is Peter Salem’s score – played live by the Scottish Ballet orchestra and reinforced with found sounds – a bird flapping (a raven one fancies), a tolling bell and some electronic oppressive darkness. It’s deeply layered and is very tightly integrated into the work – at times the sounds and stage action sync to millisecond accuracy which adds breath-taking punch to what you see. It’s no surprise to learn that Salem first did a soundtrack to a National Theatre version of The Crucible back in 1990 – he is steeped in the plot, and it shows/hears.

Peter Salem’s atmospheric score mixes devotional songs with jolting electro crow caws and shrieking strings, while David Finn’s spare set and lighting amplifies the gloom.

Lopez Ochoa’s vision and the dancers’ captivating performances combined with innovative set design and Peter Salem’s original score make me eager for more full-length works from both this choreographer and BalletX’s stellar company.

One would hope that there is an eventual recording of composer Peter Salem’s original music for this ballet. Salem performs the score at the back of the stage with an array of acoustic and electronic keyboard instruments.  From electric violin and harpsichord and banjo, world folk themes and synth drives give way to mystic sound-fields.

Peter Salem’s score with its Hispanic rhythms, marimba, brass and percussion adds Mexican flavour and he borrows a painfully romantic folksong “La Llorona” (“Weeping Woman”). Dieuweke van Reij’s design takes colours and motifs from Kahlo’s paintings (Kahlo’s core costume, for instance, from her “Broken Column”).

But for all the breathtaking imagery, what ultimately drives the performance is Cao’s indomitable Frida, paired with Max Westwell’s compassionate and charismatic Diego Rivera, and Peter Salem’s Mexican flavored score. With humor, grit and visceral physicality, “Broken Wings” tells the story of an artist shaped by hardship, but ultimately defined by triumph.

Peter Salem’s score is extraordinary. The wonderful ENB Philharmonic are set challenges with all three works, not least needing to co-ordinate with recordings, and they rise to it magnificently under the ever skilful baton of Gavin Sutherland. Everything was polished and exact. The percussion must be especially commended as they have to play a bicycle wheel and traditional Chinese instruments! Not to be left out, the horns get to pretend that they are Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass but playing a version of The Internationale that appears to have been arranged by John Cage. Fragments come and go, sometimes distorted, as if they were written on scraps of paper which the orchestra have been told to play at random.

Peter Salem’s original music, interwoven with mariachi bands and Mexican folk was rhythmically extraordinary at times and perfectly simple at others, revealing the inner world of Ochoa’s Frida.

Peter Salem’s tuneful mix of South American style tunes fits the action perfectly.

At any rate, the piece that breaks that cycle of Rojo’s, opens this programme and inspired Perry’s offering, turns out to be really rather special. Entitled Broken Wings, and reuniting Lopez Ochoa, Meckler and Streetcar composer Peter Salem, it explores the life and mind of the celebrated Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954).

It begins noirishly and abstractly, with the young Kahlo (Rojo) emerging on top of a large cube, surrounded by a part-playful, part-menacing cohort of demons adroitly decked out as Day of the Dead participants. Thereafter, these characters – deftly conceived, unmistakably Mexican emblems of psychological torment and malign fortune– are never far away, constantly waiting to pounce. As, indeed, they soon do.

With Rojo effortlessly passing for 18, Kahlo dances an engagingly carefree duet with a young fellow (Cesar Corrales), whereupon Salem’s light-hearted but rhythmically complex music suddenly screeches to a halt, the colour instantly drains from the stage, and she is brutally snatched into the air by her skeletal coterie.

And its triumph is inseparable from Peter Salem’s score, a vast exotic landscape in itself. Blasts of Tijuana brass and louche maracas summon the heat of a Mexican fiesta, a husky Mexican balladeer croons along with the love affair, and Salem even finds a musical solution to the crash on the public bus. Here is a composer who understands exactly what a ballet needs to motor it along. Hats off, too, to conductor Gavin Sutherland and the ENB Philharmonic. This is exciting work, excitingly executed.

While the various costumes by Sandra Woodall were divine and the large, wiry set design by David Finn and Emma Kingsbury was impressively detailed, the show stealer was the combination of composer Peter Salem’s new score with the vast emotions explored through the many characters, expertly depicted under Pickett’s mentorship. Salem, who has previously composed a score for A Streetcar Named Desire, another Williams’ play turned into a full-length ballet in Scotland, created this rich and complex soundscape that was performed wonderfully by The Atlanta Ballet Orchestra. His music is beautifully suggestive of the love, greed, disappointment, anxiety and hope danced on stage.

Music, choreography and emotion were as intertwined as the characters, whose fraught stories unfolded through strains drifting in and out as in a dream. Performed by the Atlanta Ballet orchestra under conductor Ari Pelto, Peter Salem’s score evoked a circus; the hypnotic Gypsy, with violin melodies both plaintive and seductive; a toreador’s horn; the indefatigable Klezmer; and an after-hours vaudeville show. Kilroy’s sparkling minimalist theme was light shining in darkness.

Salem's music is richly evocative of love, hate, tenderness, pain, fear, and hope. The powerful drums are the heartbeat of the main character, but also of life itself, pounding above the poignant melodies. I think Tennessee Williams' story has been waiting for this music ever since the play was written. 

… Peter Salem’s excellent new score

… vital asset is its atmospheric and sustaining new score by Peter Salem - dramatic and evocative

The dancers were brilliantly served by Peter Salem’s atmospheric score, which blended elements of jazz, obsessive minimalist figures, dissonant crashes and keening string romance

… Peter Salem’s score is a crucial narrative ingredient, both in it’s graphic sound effects and in the musical colours of it’s fractured percussion and insinuating jazz

The score, most of it live from a band in the pit, some of it recorded atmospheric noise, is the chief motor of this Streetcar. Drawing on a range of styles, from polite wedding waltzes to juicy New Orleans jazz to Philip Glass-ish noodling, it doesn't just underpin the action but offers emotional pointers ahead of the game. A blind man would know where he was in the story. The climax, where the "Paper Moon" theme shatters into a pile-up of discordant shards, isn't just a stirring aural metaphor for the chaos in Blanche's head, you can imagine it really is the sound in her head.

The dancers were brilliantly served by Peter Salem’s atmospheric score, which blended elements of jazz, obsessive minimalist figures, dissonant crashes and keening string romance

This production would not be the same without the evocative, jazz-infused score and fascinating sound effects created by Peter Salem. …the music aptly reflected the wide-ranging moods of the story from happiness and optimism to unsettling fear and gloomy despair, adding an extra layer of emotional nuance to this brilliant piece of theatrical dance.

Composer Peter Salem’s beguiling music, performed by the Opera House Orchestra, included a mix of jazz, swing, mournful saxophone and unnerving piano notes that wafted like smoke and doom, all of which imbued the ballet with just the right off-kilter atmosphere.