Town Hall
Review: Heath Lees
As an opening, conductor Peter Scholes solemnly read a sentence by Stendahl: "The French are the wittiest, the most charming ... and up to the present moment, the least musical race on earth."
Mentally rolling up their sleeves, Scholes and his band vowed to prove this statement
wrong with music that was either French or related to France.
Of course Stendahl was an opera freak, and could not see past Rossini. Had he gone to the instrumental concerts of his day, he would have found that there were some excellent French compositions, many of them inspired by Leclair, a major pioneer of the French violin school and the composer of many fine violin concertos.
One of these - the op 7 number 4 in F major - began this concert, with Douglas Beilman taking charge of the taxing solo part.
Beilman is the second violinist in the New Zealand String Quartet, and it was a pleasant change to see him here as soloist, a role which he carried out with great command, especially in the difficult filigree of the first movement's runs and decorations, and in the energetic course of the finale, which was accurate and musical, though overly serious.
Beilman returned later to play Ravel's near-impossible Tzigane with an expanded orchestra.
His serious approach here became a well-placed intensity, which strongly evoked the passionate language of this gypsy-inspired piece.
There were two unashamedly entertaining items, presumably on the grounds that it was the French who invented the art of humorous pastiche.
David Hamilton's One More Time, Mr Couperin was good, frivolous fun and the witty Divertissement, which Ibert wrote in 1930, was like musical champagne - a Carnival of the Animals for grown-ups.
Even more players appeared for the final item - Bizet's C-major Symphony - but the internal balance was never very convincing.
Tempo and style were well-intentioned, but phrasing and intonation were both in need of considerably more work to gain that most uniquely French quality of all - finesse.
