Joby Talbot's Kaleidoscopic Oscar© Score

When David Hallberg asked Christopher Wheeldon to make a new work exclusively for The Australian Ballet, he was really asking for two world premieres. Just as Wheeldon’s Oscar^© has been choreographed on the company’s dancers, Joby Talbot’s score has been written expressly for the Orchestra Victoria players. They’re the ones who will bring it into the world. The music will forever bear the imprint of their talents.

“Working with a new score is always incredibly exciting,” says Jonathan Lo, The Australian Ballet’s music director and Oscar^© conductor. Orchestra Victoria's Section Principal Flute, Lisa-Maree Amos, knows Talbot’s work from playing for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland^©, and is a huge fan. “He’s clever, he's witty, the orchestrations are always so good. Challenging enough to push you that bit further, but totally indicative of the instrument.”

Talbot returns the compliment. He says the job was doable in the time available only because The Australian Ballet and Orchestra Victoria are so accommodating and enthusiastic. “I said yes only because they are just such a lovely bunch of people to work with.”

As soon as the project had the green light, there was discussion with Talbot about what orchestration The Australian Ballet wanted him to use. “There’s always a little bit of horse-trading,” says Lo. That was the starting point, even before Wheeldon and Talbot had locked down the ballet’s scenario and before a step had been choreographed.

If it sounds like a big leap of faith, the longstanding creative relationship between Wheeldon and Talbot helped a great deal. Oscar^© is the fourth full-length ballet they have made together, including Alice. “They have this really refined process where they speak each other’s shorthand,” Lo says.

For many reasons, including the fact that Wheeldon does not choreograph without the music, a huge amount of responsibility lies on the composer’s shoulders. “What happens in the orchestra pit does so much of the heavy lifting in ballet. Much more than in opera and certainly much more than in film, which is what we get compared to a lot of the time,” Lo says. “In ballet, the score is the emotion, the score is the pacing, the score is the pulse behind the steps.”

It was particularly important that Talbot be aware of how his music for Oscar^© would sound in Melbourne’s Regent Theatre. It’s a new venue for the company and every space has unique qualities. Along with the creation of Talbot’s compositions, the practical matter of how the orchestra would be set up in the pit affects aspects of the score.

A great deal of work has gone into making sure the Regent’s acoustics will suit this kind of music-making. It has nothing to do with amplification. It’s about giving the audience a faithful experience of the music produced by the orchestra. Lo says The Australian Ballet has been promised an acoustic that will rival some of the world’s best concert halls. “It’s going to be fantastic.”

By late last year Wheeldon had started choreographing and was sending notes about making adjustments here and there. It’s a situation Lo describes as “fluidity that is in tension, but thrilling and positive tension”. Small nuances can make a big difference. “Not just in the pacing of the ballet, but the drama, and with how we conduct the show.”

Opening night had been set in stone long before all this, and the non-negotiable deadline for delivering the full score was two weeks before the first rehearsal was scheduled. Talbot heroically came through well before that, giving the players extra time with a piano reduction (a simplified transcription of the score) and advising of the orchestration well in advance.

By the time the full score arrives, or what Amos calls “the map of everything that’s going on around you”, the orchestra only has five or six rehearsals and two dress rehearsals to bring the composers' vision to life. “Then we’re in. It’s a very quick turnaround,” says Amos.

There’s an extra level of complexity in the introduction of electronic elements in Oscar^©, a device Lo describes as “bringing orchestration into the 21st century. “It’s not electronics as a separate entity in the orchestra, it’s electronics as part of the orchestration. That will be really evident in act two where the soundscape and the orchestra are intertwined as one.”

Otherwise, the score has been written in a relatively conventional manner, but is suffused with Talbot’s special touches.

“He's a very creative composer, Amos says. “He taps into so many different genres, but he’ll have a new spin on it. You always know that you’re up for something interesting. His writing is very colourful, very expressive, very picturesque. It unfolds so beautifully.”

Lo doesn’t want to give too much away but does mention that a singer will be in the pit as part of the orchestral texture. She will give voice to the bird in Wilde’s story The Nightingale and the Rose, which is a touchstone in the first half of Oscar^©.

Lo says Talbot has written a score just as kaleidoscopic as his music for Alice but also given it a layer of profound emotion. “That will be really powerful for the audience, the ballet and the story.”