New full-length ballet scores are not at all common these days. The National Ballet of Canada commissioned American composer Michael Torke to write music for a creation called The Contract. Choreographed by James Kudelka after a libretto by Robert Sirman, it is a Pied-Piper story within a Pied-Piper story. It was reportedly a great success at its premiere in the spring of 2002.

Torke's music is attractive and, despite its very conservative harmonic language, mildly original. He has a fine post-minimalist sense of beauty, is a good orchestrator and generally understands how to reach an audience without pandering. Though I haven't seen the ballet, this CD makes me very much want to.

This isn't to say that the score entirely succeeds on its own. There is very little suggestion of darkness or menace in it, which is no problem if such things are provided by the dance it accompanies. But seventy minutes of cheerful, colourful dance music can be a bit much. The composer might do well to craft a concert suite of half an hour or a little less, paying attention to the needs of a concert audience (or a CD collector).

Still, this is music well worth hearing. Ormsby Wilkins conducts a robust-sounding National Ballet of Canada Orchestra in a reading that must have pleased the composer enormously.