French Orchestral Favourites

Georges Bizet: Carmen Suites Nos 1 and 2; Camille Saint-Saëns: Dance macabre; Paul Dukas: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; Claude Debussy: Clair de lune; Emmanuel Chabrier: Joyeuse Marche; Maurice Ravel: Une Barque sur l’océan

Sinfonia of London
Charlie Lovell-Jones John Mills leaders John Wilson conductor
(Hybrid SACD; also available in Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio)

Chandos CHSA 5379
Chandos.net

Since John Wilson relaunched Sinfonia of London in 2018, the orchestra has rarely put a foot wrong. This is the twenty-sixth album in a discography that has ranged with disarming ease from Rachmaninoff to Rodgers & Hammerstein, and it turns to the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century French repertoire that has long been one of Wilson's natural territories. Opera and ballet dominated French musical life during this period, and the orchestral writing that grew up alongside them was poetic and narrative rather than symphonically argued—a tradition in which master orchestrators such as Debussy and Ravel drew colours and textures from the orchestra that has kept these works at the heart of the international repertoire.

The programme itself is a familiar parade of favourites — Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice, Debussy's Clair de lune, Chabrier's Marche joyeuse, Ravel's Une barque sur l'océan, Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre and selections from Bizet's Carmen Suites — and the playing is, as one would expect from this hand-picked ensemble, exquisite.

Attention to the minutiae is faultless; every detail shines through, and the Chandos engineering is of the calibre we have come to take almost for granted: the closing bars of Danse macabre are particularly beautifully balanced, the dawn cock-crow set just so against the receding skeletons.

Each section under Wilson's baton delivers with panache. The strings add warm textures throughout, and the opening of The Sorcerer's Apprentice is suitably mysterious and faintly creepy — Wilson reminding us, as he so often does, what a master orchestrator Dukas was. In Danse macabre, leader John Mills is excellent as Death, summoning the skeletons to dance at midnight, and the bassoons and xylophone conjure exactly the spectral atmosphere the piece demands.

And yet. This is repertoire that lives or dies on a particular kind of risk — the willingness to let the music breathe a little beyond what the score strictly prescribes. The accuracy and precision are here in spades, the rhythmic energy and dynamic control of the highest quality, but in places one longs for a touch more abandon, a sense that the players have set the printed page aside and given themselves over to the dance.

The Carmen Suites are a case in point. Having just returned from Seville, where a major football match and a series of corridas were unfolding in tandem, my ear was tuned to a particular kind of Iberian heat; it is here, but slightly veiled; the colour and characterisation held a fraction in reserve. To call it perfunctory would be quite wrong — the playing is far too distinguished for that — but a little more fire would not have gone amiss. Think of it as a good meal that wants the warmth of a chilli running through it: the dish is beautifully made, but a single touch of heat would lift everything around it.

Richard Langham Smith's booklet notes are, as ever, interesting and informative and provide an elegant frame for a recording that will please anyone who comes to it for sheer orchestral finesse. Those listeners who prize that quality above all will be in their element. Others may find themselves wishing, just occasionally, that Wilson had loosened the reins and allowed his magnificent orchestra to kick over the traces.