Peter Pan

The score for this “Peter Pan” was written over a period of months after a meeting with David Nixon early in 2004. Like many people, I knew the story very well, but I knew it as a mass of different memories : a play, a pantomime, a book, a cartoon and various snippets and versions that we often come across. The one prevailing sympathy I had was for Captain Hook. So after meeting David and Pat Doyle I went back to the book to rediscover the other characters. I was surprised by how, as an adult, my sympathies had changed and I soon started to enjoy the other characters.

The way in to writing this score was through Tinkerbell -I started the ballet with the section that I thought was central to the story: Tinkerbell’s sacrifice. Originally this part was twenty five minutes long and David Nixon ‘phoned me and pointed out that this bit of the story did not justify such an extended dance. Various other much smaller changes were made during the process of composition { with the invaluable help of John Longstaff) and with our weekly ‘phone conversations David and I gradually arrived at the final score. Because of the nature of a piece like this, while writing the music I had strong
visual images of how the ballet would look, how Hook would enter, how he would fight, how Tinkerbell would die. how Mr. darling would greet his sons and so on. But unlike composition for film, none of these things existed yet and so when the actual choreography develops it was often a total surprise.

I thoroughly enjoyed the collaboration with David Nixon and Patricia Doyle and I was delighted with the excellence of the musicianship under the direction of John Pryce-Jones and his music team.

Stephen Warbeck