Reviews

• I can’t get enough of Talbot’s glorious moving toy shop of a score, with lashings of shimmer and chime. Strange percussion emerges from the musical undergrowth, while the rabbit’s cornet is more of a shofar, an alarming call to judgement. And, at its heart, there’s a blessed-out waltz for dancing flowers: froufrou petals in edible colours. It’s sure to be a treat on screen.
  David Jays, Sunday Times, 24/03/2013
• ...Talbot’s sublimely witty score, which seems to use every instrument to match the sounds from the pit to the action on the stage, creating a lush soundscape that drives the action.
  Sarah Crompton, The Telegraph, 17/03/2013
• The invisible star is British composer Joby Talbot's new score...
  Talbot’s score had my attention from the moment the curtain went up, in the quiet, short interlude. Although the music is written with four beats to the measure, the castanet counts five beats for each entrance, subliminally suggesting that something a little wacky is about to take place on stage (our attention is not supposed to be on the orchestra pit, after all).
  The brass and woodwinds get a huge workout in this score, which also has an electronic component to supply occasional pedal notes and entirely superfluous human voices (held vowels that could just as easily have been played by clarinets, violas, cellos or even an English horn).
  Talbot loves suspended dissonance in his tonal writing, leaving our ears on edge in anticipation of the music resolving into consonance. This is another apt reflection of what’s happening on stage as Alice travels through her off-kilter dreamworld.
  John Terauds, www.musicaltoronto.org, 15/11/2012
• It’s official: the Royal Ballet has a perennial hit on its hands… What truly sets it all spinning is the shimmering, urgent and mischievous music of the composer Joby Talbot.
  Donald Hutera, The Times, 20/03/2012
• Talbot’s score is as colourful and mercurial as it is cinematic.5*
  Mark Monahan, Daily Telegraph, 19/03/2012
• Joby Talbot’s original score is simply superb. By turns symphonic and cinematic, the music perfectly matches each episode of Carroll’s wondrous tale. For example, the White Rabbit’s leitmotif is other-worldly eerie. The terrifying Queen of Hearts gets the cut and thrust of a killer tango, while the tea party is sheer cacophony. Conductor David Briskin and his players prove their mettle with the complex orchestration.
  
  
  Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail, 05/06/2011
• Talbot's score provides instantly enjoyable, vividly illustrative musical accompaniment.
  Rupert Christiansen, The Critics, 13/03/2011
• The real engine powering the show is Joby Talbot's score, a storming piece of work spiced with exotic woodwind, James Bond brass, and an ironmongers'-worth of percussion, deployed with thrilling climactic control.
  Jenny Gilbert, Independent on Sunday, 06/03/2011
• An out-and-out success is Joby Talbot's wonderful score, vivid, eclectic, lyrical, dramatic, full of colour and apt to characters and incident. Talbot pull[s] out all the stops in his luscious music.
  David Dougill, The Sunday Times, 06/03/2011
• Joby Talbot's superlative score...rarely falters. The White Rabbit has a tinkling, crystalline theme, in obedience to which Watson darts around with neurotic, time-checking precision. Talbot's music swoops, flutters and shimmers in concord with Alice's mood, now flutish and inquiring, now brassily perplexed, and for her duets with Jack, transformed by her dream into the Knave of Hearts, he delivers passages of spun-sugar lyricism.
  Luke Jennings, The Observer, 06/03/2011
• First credit has to go to Joby Talbot's score. Driven by a huge percussion section, with weird and wayward textures, vividly descriptive melodies and a shimmer of emotion, this is music that is not only sophisticated, but also danceable.
  
  This Alice looks set to become a classic.
  Judith Mackrell, The Guardian, 01/03/2011
• Alice's Adventure in Wonderland, with a stunning score by Joby Talbot, is a spectacular family entertainment brought to life with enormous theatrical verve.
  
  Talbot's score is utterly enchanting, a tapestry of wonder and mystery that shimmers with rich characterisation.
  Debra Craine, The Times, 01/03/2011
• Joby Talbot's exuberant score....swirls and shimmers...lets rip with music for a playing card ballet. It's a dazzling show.
  Zoe Anderson, The Independent, 01/03/2011
• Joby Talbot's score drives onwards, full of colour. ... Alice will undoubtedly be hugely popular; it's colourful, enjoyable fun.
  Sarah Crompton, The Telegraph, 01/03/2011
• This is a gigantic orchestra with weird percussion and ram's horn trumpets emitting a positive Niagara Falls of picturesque music. ... Talbot, for his industry, zeal and vigorously eclectic story-painting, he's man of the match.
  Ismene Brown, The Arts Desk, 01/03/2011
• With Joby Talbot’s inventive score driving the action and setting the mood, shifting gear from cod-Tchaikovsky to Bernard Hermann hysteria and from thundering Stravinsky to lush Rogers and Hammerstein with ease, this romps along, building scene after scene of breathtaking invention.
  Neil Norman, The Express, 01/03/2011
• Talbot’s score is bright, hard-edged ... [with] driving energies.
  Clement Crisp, The Financial Times, 01/03/2011
• Talbot’s score is the trump card for 'Alice'. It’s a dazzling array of melodies and shimmering percussion, usefully atmospheric and dancey, yet sophisticated enough to feel like more than a mere support. It’s one of the things that makes 'Alice' enjoyable.
  Roslyn Sulcas, New York Times, 01/03/2011
• Talbot's percussive score is glamorous and cacophonous, and evokes the near-riot of Lewis's characters. Talbot uses unexpected instruments, which provide musical intrigue and frame the surreal narrative.
  Sarah Frater, This is London, 01/03/2011
• Their task is made so much easier by the superb, perfectly attuned, tic-toc musical smorgasbord by Joby Talbot.
  , Ballet News, 01/03/2011