Please, pretty please, will somebody revive this lovely ballet.

Standard YouTube Licence


In Prosit Neues Jahr 2 Jan 2016 and Frohes Neues Jahr 1 Jan 2014 I mentioned Lichine's Graduation Ball. As you can see from the video it is a charming ballet. It was once very popular.  I saw London Festival Ballet perform it in the late 1960s or early 1970s, It was also in the repertoire of the Australian Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, National Ballet of Cuba and the Ballet of La Scala, Nowadays hardly anybody seems to perform it. Why is that? It is so happy and the music is so lovely.

Admittedly there is not much of a plot. It's a bit like Grease. A girls' school holds a dance and invites the boys in the cadet corps. Both boys and girls are shy at first but they slowly break the ice. They play games and one of the boys takes a fancy to one of the young ladies. So, too, do the students' teachers and they plan to meet after the ball. Unfortunately, they spot the students and the mistress and master lead their miscreant pupils back to their respective establishments.

The music is by Johann Strauss the younger as arranged by Antal Dorati and was first performed in Australia by the Ballet Russe in 1940. Quite remarkable that there was an audience for Strauss when Australia and Austria (then part of Nazi Germany) were at each other's throats.

Graduation Ball would be a lovely ballet for a school or small company.

Prosit Neues Jahr

Musikverein Vienna, Golden Hall

Source Wikipedia

Television over the New Year used to be decked out with tartan, accordions, Scottish country dancing and Glaswegian comics. That tradition seems to have waned even in Scotland with a new emphasis on fireworks and fun fairs. Probably a good thing as Hogmanay was often accompanied by excessive drinking which must have placed an enormous strain on traffic patrols and the National Health Service. Nowadays the world wakes up for the annual New Year's Day concert from Vienna.

Not everyone enjoys that concert. Writing in The Spectator Norman Lebrecht described the concert as "an annual jellybox of waltzes, polkas, galops, marches and any old tritsch-trash" in "The Nazi origins of the Vienna Phil’s New Year’s Day concert". He described the music as "strictly bar-room, written by members of the Strauss family as social foreplay for the soldiery and serving classes in low taverns."

I am afraid that I do not agree with him.

Great orchestras are allowed to let their hair down once in a while. On Thursday I attended The Hallé's Abba concert where the orchestra including the conductor appeared in big hair wigs and 1970s costumes to act as a backing group for largely inaudible singers attempting to belt out Dancing Queen and Fernando to an audience of swaying sexuagenarians. If I were unkind I could have described the experience as akin to listening to a tribute band in a retirement home, but I won't because it was still good fun and everyone including yours truly had a great time.  The Strauss family are at least the artistic equals to Abba and for my part I greatly prefer them.

Mr Labrecht's main concern lies in the origins of the concert:

"The tradition, however, is decidedly pernicious. This concert came into being as a gift to Nazi criminals, a cover for genocide. The Vienna Philharmonic was quick to sack Jewish and leftist musicians when Hitler came to town. More than a dozen were sent to concentration camps; seven of them perished. The orchestra unanimously endorsed the Anschluss with Germany, exhorted by the conductor Karl Böhm to declare ‘a 100 per cent “yes”’, and proved a willing executioner of cultural cleansing, removing Mahler and other giants from its walls and histories."

He complains of the exclusion and under representation of women and non-white musicians in the orchestra:

"The orchestra has, until recently, excluded women. One of the perverse pleasures of watching the New Year’s Day broadcast is to count how few females are permitted to take part. The orchestra has just seven women members out of a roll call of 130, the lowest in any 21st-century symphony orchestra."

True but that was also a criticism that could be levelled at many British institutions including a well known watering hole in Fleet Street frequented by journalists and out of work barristers for many years. He concludes:

"So long as appearance defeats substance — so long as the world oohs and ahhs at the musical sweetmeats and ignores the dirt in the kitchen, New Year’s Day from Vienna will remain a family favourite, a testament to our human ability to look the other way."

With all respect to Mr Lebrecht, I rather hope it does.

Anschluss was reversed over 70 years ago. There was pretty thorough de-Nazification by the allies who partitioned Austria for a while immediately after the end of the war. Very few if any of the players could have been born during the second world war. Modern Austria is our democratic partner in major international and European institutions including the United Nations which was celebrated by Robert Stolz's UNO March, the first piece in yesterday's programme.

The Vienna Philharmonic is raising money for asylum seekers. Next year's concert is to be conducted by Gustavo Dudamel of the Simon Bolivar Orchestra. Sorry but I want to hear that concert. Indeed, if I could spare the time and money I would rather like to be in Vienna this time next year.

Before reading Mr Lebrecht's article I had intended to write about the ballet sequences which were performed by dancers of the Vienna State Ballet (Wiener Staatsballett). There were only two of them this year - one danced at the Prater race track and the other at the Schönbrunn Palace. Not surprisingly, these are the bits of the TV transmission that I like most. I enjoyed both pieces very much and I wish I could find out the names of the dancers and choreographer in order to congratulate them. I can, however, report that the company is directed by Manuel Legris who was one of the stars of the Paris Opera Ballet, that the company is dancing Ashton's La Fille mal gardée until 20 Jan 2016 and that it has some lovely works in its current repertoire and that some of those performances are streamed live over the internet.

Vienna's connection with the ballet is often overlooked but it was the birthplace of Ludwig Minkus who gave us La Bayadère and Don Quixote (see More Thoughts on Don Quixote 20 Oct 2013). It is also the setting for Lichine's charming Graduation Ball which I really wish someone would revive.

Frohes neues Jahr

Musikverein Vienna    Source Wikipedia

Like the Scots, we Mancunians make (or at least did make) a fuss of New Year. My family kept the tradition of "letting in the New Year" even in suburban Surrey where I lived from the age of 6 until I went away to St Andrews for university and to Los Angeles for graduate school. Indeed I have kept up the tradition even in those exotic places where they have their own ways of celebrating the New Year. The head of the household (so long as he has or had black hair) slips out at 23:55 on 31 Dec with a gift wrapped slice of bread and lump of coal symbolizing a hope for food and warmth in the coming winter and returns at about 00:02 on 1 Jan to be greeted by mother with a slice of Christmas cake, a mince pie and a glass of sherry.

I love New Year even more - or rather very much more - than Christmas with its tarnished tinsel, moulting pine needles, re-cycled turkey, bad temper, insincerity and utter extravagance. I celebrate it quietly with family or friends. I have tried the American way with a party, the Scots way with wall to wall whisky, the London way freezing for fireworks, even the Sierra Leonean way with a watch night service followed by wild rejoicing "Happy new year me no die-o, Tell God tenke for life" but I like the Mancunian way best.

Before the New Year is even out of nappies there is the New Year's Day concert from the Musikverein in Vienna. It is one of the few television programmes I endeavour not to miss. I hope one day to attend the concert in person. I was actually a guest at a function in the Musikverein when the City Council invited the International Bar Association for which the Austrian post office actually issued a special stamp. And as a balletomane the best part of the whole concert is the dancing.

We tend to overlook Austria's contribution to ballet but it is not insignificant. Ludwig Minkus, the composer of the score for Don Quixote came from Vienna and indeed died there in 1917. There is Lichine's delightful Graduation Ball to the music of Johann Strauss which used to be part of Festival's repertoire but has sadly been dropped. There are the dancers of the Vienna State Ballet which include our very own James Stephens of Huddersfield. As I said in my review of The Choral's Messiah we dance as well as sing in Huddersfield and we have David Bintley to prove it. Indeed, I think a little bit of our Huddersfield music may be played occasionally to the 12 dance superstars of the future.

This year the State Ballet performed three dances, two from the Liechtenstein Palace and a waltz from the Musikverein itself. Much of the attention this year was on Vivienne Westwood's costumes for the dancers - very Graduation Ball and very La Syulphide - but I think Ashley Page's choreography deserved a cheer. I particularly liked his arrangement of Lanner's Die Romantiker and the Blue Danube. I was distracted from the choreography for Delibes's Sylvia by the tartan which did not seem to relate to the ballet at all.

Before writing this post I read Dave Tries Ballet's Goals for 2014 and had a few reflections of my own. Whereas Dave looks forward I have looked back at some of the many delights of the year.

Sarah Kundi's Depouillage which led me to the magnificent Ballet Black and from there to MurleyDance with its talented dancers. I can't watch Kundi without tears welling up though, having said that, I am an equally passionate fan of the other 5 dancers.

Much the same thing happened with the Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet. Because I was married to a Sierra Leonean for nearly 28 years I was intrigued to learn about Michaela dePrince and was thrilled by what I saw of her virtuosity on YouTube. But seeing her on film was nothing compared to seeing her on stage. She is quite the most exciting dancer I have seen in years. And she is one of 12 outstanding talents.   I love them all.

Other highlights of the year? I saw the Stuttgart Ballet dance Taming of the Shrew at last, a ballet that I have wanted to see for the last 44 years.  I rekindled my love for Scottish Ballet through watching Hansel and Gretel.  I experienced something remarkable at the West Yorkshire Playhouse when my beloved Northern Ballet danced A Midsummer Night's Dream. And I saw Nixon's Cinderella less than a week ago which was a triumph.

I have seen a lot of ballet in 2013 and I look forward to some more this year. I am looking forward in particular to seeing Antoinette Sibley again at the Royal Ballet School on 2 Feb.

At the end of the concert in Vienna the conductor and orchestra wish the world "Frohes neues Jahr" and that gentle readers is my wish to all of you.