French orchestral favourites from John Wilson and Sinfonia of London

Ever since their second album, Escales (released back in 2020), French music has been an important part of the recorded repertoire of John Wilson and Sinfonia of London, taking in pieces by Dutilleux and Ravel along the way. Their latest release sees them returning to Gallic ground with a beautifully varied and colourfully performed collection of works by Dukas, Debussy, Chabrier, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, and Bizet.

We kick off with what must surely be the epitome of a French orchestral favourite, namely Dukas’s ever-popular tone poem, L'Apprenti sorcier. Based on a poem by Goethe, it describes the misadventures of the eponymous sorcerer’s apprentice who tries to escape his chores by enchanting a broom to wash the floor for him, but is unable to stop the spell and subsequently makes it much worse by splitting the single broomstick with an axe, thereby multiplying the bewitched objects and accelerating the disaster (a tale familiar, of course, to Mickey Mouse fans thanks to Disney’s Fantasia…). 

Dukas’s piece is an incredibly intricate, fiendish tour de force that tests the prowess of any ensemble. Devotees of Sinfonia of London will not be surprised to learn that this performance is absolutely top-notch: right from the slow introduction everything is immaculate, with crisp, repeated flute chords and delicate harp harmonics combined with a brief but breathtaking horn solo that is stunning in its almost impossibly quiet execution. The famous bassoon melody is humorously carried out, and as the legion of broomsticks gets out of control and the hapless magician becomes more and more distressed at the chaos he has caused, Wilson judges all of the frenetic tempo increases perfectly.

The meat of the album comes in the form of the two suites from Bizet’s Carmen, compiled a few years after the composer’s death by his friend Ernest Guiraud. Interspersing the opera’s entractes with numbers such as the Habanera, Séguedille, and Micaëla’s aria (with instruments replacing the vocal lines), the suites are normally performed in Guiraud’s ordering, but Wilson has produced his own partial resequencing, the most significant of which is to move Les Toréadors from its usual position at the end of Suite No. 1 to be the first thing we hear (which makes complete sense as this is exactly how things are in the actual opera). 

As with the Dukas, Wilson spotlights little details of Bizet’s orchestration, from the unctuous low cornet writing in the Prélude, to the seductive oboe and tambourine in the Aragonaise and a pleasingly perky pair of piccolos in La Garde montante. Every mood is captured vividly, whether it be the charming flute and harp in the Intermezzo (at an attractively flowing tempo), the assured swagger of the solo cornet standing in for the bullfighter Escamillo in the Chanson du Toréador, or the progressively frenzied Danse bohême that concludes the suite.

As impressive as all of these pyrotechnics are, however, for me the heart of the proceedings lies in John Wilson’s orchestration that he made back in 1994 of Debussy’s Clair de lune (originally composed for solo piano). Full of warm woodwind and ravishing violins, it’s an utterly beguiling arrangement. With moments that reminded me of other works by Debussy, such as an oboe line that could have come straight out of La mer, or flute and horn interjections that put me in mind of Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune, it sounds entirely authentic and is a real gem of a performance.

Both this and another transcription of a piano work (Ravel’s own orchestration of Une Barque sur l'océan from Miroirs) afford ample opportunity to showcase the exquisite timbre of Sinfonia of London’s string section, as well as Wilson’s careful attention to dynamics and the wonderful way that he sculpts every phrase to find just the right sound world for each piece. Add to that delightfully exuberant readings of Chabrier’s Joyeuse Marche and Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre that more than live up to their respective adjectives (the latter featuring a satisfyingly devilish account of the solo violin part from John Mills), and you have an album that left me as spellbound as an apprentice’s broomstick.