Northern Ballet Theatre, Britain's first ballet company not based in London, has made a tradition of adapting famous novels into full-length ballets, including Wuthering Heights, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. The scores for some have been original commissions, but some have been arrangements of preexisting pieces by an individual composer. In the case of The Three Musketeers, John Longstaff arranged a selection of film scores and symphonic and chamber music of
Malcolm Arnold. (
Arnold had planned to write a ballet on the subject, but never went beyond a sketch.)
Arnold was an intensely dramatic neo-Romantic, so his music fits well with the swashbuckling theatricality of the subject matter. The pieces or fragments that Longstaff has arranged are brief, lasting from under two minutes to over five minutes, and while their assemblage lacks a strong musical cohesion, it's easy to see how each of the 25 movements could effectively underscore a scene of the ballet.
Arnold's music here may have more surface than substance, but the surface is ingratiating and makes for an emotionally charged score. The Northern Ballet Theatre Orchestra is a small ensemble, with less than 30 players, but has a full, warm sound.
John Pryce-Jones leads them in a strongly inflected and romantic reading of the variegated score.