Orchestra Next Archive

Kenji BUNCH – The Snow Queen: A Ballet in Two Acts – Orchestra Next/Brian McWhorter (cond.) – innova

by Audiophile Audition | Aug 15, 2017 | Classical CD Reviews

Kenji BUNCH – The Snow Queen: A Ballet in Two Acts – Orchestra Next/Brian McWhorter (cond.) – innova #977 (6/23/17), TT: 102:33 ****: Fantastic musical interpretation of this fairy tale classic.  When I was asked to review these CDs, I interestingly did something that I normally don’t do. I chose not to read the liner notes until I had listened to this in its entirety. Growing up in the land of 10,000 lakes, long and cold winters were something that I knew all too well. I have my own aural preconceptions of winter “should” sound like in my own head, and I genuinely wanted to be surprised as to how Bunch and Oregon’s own Orchestra NEXT brought this classic Hans Christian Andersen tale to life for the Eugene Ballet Company. Since the ballet is divided into two acts, there are two discs in total. Although I was not able to watch the ballet choreography while listening to the music, I honestly didn’t need to see it—the music tells the story quite well. What I was impressed with right away on disc one was how Bunch was able to show the subtle complexities of winter compositionally. It would be easy to […]