Purcell: The Tempest

Advantages: A fine departure from pop's creatively stagnant norm!
Disadvantages: Maybe too bizarre for some tastes

...an urgent appeal to another time zone. There is an unexpected source of help in the form of a mysterious old lady - herself in the far future. Whips, fiddles and Uillean Pipes whip up into a crazed menacing dance. If she dies this night, the old lady and her family will never be. The powerful Irish arrangement is infused with overtones of fear and hope - the dance of a shadowy figure who may never come to be. The music rises now to a tempest with "Hello Earth". At first stripped down to piano and vocals, it rises in drama and power, until it is overtaken by a darker-than-dark male choir. The Richard Hickox Singers add grandly to the theme of utter despair, symbolising final loss and misery. "Hello Earth" fades to nothing with a terrifying whimper of agony and hopelessness, to be amazingly replaced by a light of hope - "The Morning Fog... Read review

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Advantages: Great music & performances. Fun & energetic
Disadvantages: Too much dialogue before/during tracks, which can become irritating

...Return to the Forbidden Planet is a musical by Bob Carlton. It opened on September 18th 1989 at The Cambridge Theatre, London. The following year it won the Olivier Award for Best Musical. Billed as 'Shakespeare's forgotten rock and roll masterpiece' the show is based around his play The Tempest and the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Narrated by Patrick Moore, who plays his part via pre-recorded video shown on the viewscreen at the back of the stage, the show uses the hits of the 1950s and 60s to tell the story of Dr Prospero, the mad scientist who in his laboratory developed a formula that would change the world. His perfidious wife Gloria, however, duped him and sent him off into hyperspace in an old spacecraft. Gloria did not realised that their baby daughter Miranda was sleeping aboard the craft and was catapulted into space along... Read review

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Advantages: Bewitching performances from Thibaudet, ECO, et al., of Marianelli's gorgeous music, inspired by LvB.
Disadvantages: Too short! I want more!

...of this public ball, we are given 'Another Dance', the stately music that attends the stricter social affair at Mr Bingley's Netherfield home. In the third 'dance' track, conductor Benjamin Wallfisch seems to be cracking a whip above the heads of his players whilst urging them to go 'Faster, faster, faster!' They oblige and 'Can't Slow Down' (on track 14). On the brisk and buoyant 'The Militia Marches In' (played by the English Chamber Orchestra's...fife-and-drum corps?), the only things missing are the silly giggles of Lizzy's two youngest sisters, Lydia and Kitty, while gawking at the handsome redcoats making their entrance into Meryton. This will get you marking time, too. In 'Postcard to Purcell', the composer lifts the rondeau from the incidental music to 'Abdelazer' (a.k.a. 'The Moor's Revenge'), written by Henry Purcell... Read review

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