An annual event, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Evening of Music and Dance offers the company’s Royal Ballet Sinfonia the chance to be centre stage. Where we usually hear the orchestra’s wonderful playing emanating from the pit of a theatre, at Symphony Hall the musicians are all on stage, visible to the audience.

The programme is then a mix of pieces of music and excerpts of ballet, largely pas de deux, as the dancers share the stage with the orchestra.

This was the first time the company had performed the concert evening since before Covid and it was a welcome return. Conductor Paul Murphy appeared to be delighted to be back and led the orchestra through two hours of beautiful music.

There was a Spanish theme to the evening with orchestral pieces including Rossini’s Overture to The Barber of Seville, Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance from El amor brujo and Emmanuel Chabrier’s España - all played with gusto by the orchestra.

The Spanish theme also appeared in the ballet excerpts with a steamy pas de deux from BRB director Carlos Acosta’s Carmen performed with plenty of passion by Lachlan Monaghan and Sofia Liñares.

In many ways the evening offers the company a chance to showcase some of its finest works and last year’s successful premiere Interlinked by Juliano Nunes made an appearance with a pas de deux featuring two male dancers. Performed by Tzu-Chao Chou and Brandon Lawrence, the piece sees an interweaving of bodies and exchange of roles as the two balance each other out, neither supremely dominant.

Frederick Ashton’s choreography to Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini takes the company into a much more traditional and classical mode with Beatrice Parma and Max Maslen in the lead roles and piano accompaniment by Jeanette Wong.

For a bit of character dancing, Sofia Liñares played the Goddess of the Moon and Tyrone Singleton the hunter in the Diana and Actaeon pas de deux set to music by Cesare Pugni. Technically, the work calls on a great deal of skill from both dancers, not least in the smaller space of the Symphony Hall stage.

Students from Elmhurst Ballet School also had their moment with an exuberant performance of Two Dances from Estancia in which they brought alive the gaucho spirit to music by Alberto Ginastera.

Two of the jewels it the crown of the programme took the audience into two of the great classic ballets – Swan Lake and Le Corsaire. Brandon Lawrence and Céline Gittens were perfectly matched in the pas de deux from Act III in which the Black Swan Odile bewitches Prince Siegfried set to Tchaikovsky’s luscious score. And Yaoqian Shang and Riku Ito concluded the performance with a technically stunning pas de deux from Le Corsaire, which rightly resulted in rapturous applause.

Compéring the evening, broadcaster and BRB board member Marverine Cole shared information about the different pieces with warmth and affection, ensuring the evening remained light-hearted and informal despite the brilliant performances on stage.

By Diane Parkes

For further information on Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) and for future performances, visit brb.org.uk