Scottish Chamber Orchestra: François Leleux
The Queen’s Hall - 03/03/22
A concert of two halves
Of course most concerts can be divided before and after the interval but tonight there was a huge divide, in the first half a French programme beginning with the familiar tunes of Bizet and then a new work for tonight’s oboist and conductor Francois Leloux by French composer Lauren Petitgirard. The second half was the mighty sound of Beethoven’s Second Symphony wonderfully played and conducted by Leloux.
It was a very big and fully masked audience at the Queens Hall tonight for the concert, no social distancing anymore, and it seems audiences are returning to the concert hall and the opera house. Scottish Opera are selling out their new production of ‘A Midsummers Night Dream’ down the road at the Festival Theatre. Masking in Scotland is due to end in a couple of weeks, but I suspect the practice may continue amongst the mainly older classical audiences.
We were surprised by the size of the SCO tonight, it had 54 musicians listed including a big percussion section and harpist Eleanor Hudson. This is bigger than the numbers playing in recent concerts by the RSNO and the BBC Scottish, our full scale symphony orchestras. It seemed that the new composition for oboe required a really big orchestra which I suspect made it an expensive night for the SCO. It also made it a very loud night in the Queens Hall, the orchestra extended halfway into the stalls and the small scale 800 seat hall and wooden surrounds of the concert hall resonated loudly with the music. This was particularly true in the first half of the concert when there was a lot of brass and percussion; at times I thought about taking out my hearing aids to soften the noise!
The concert began with a topical touch, the playing of a prayer for Ukraine, although, owing to Francois Leleux’s strong French accent, most people didn’t understand what they were listening to and were puzzled when he walked off at the end of the prayer, weak applause greeting his return with his baton. The concert proper began with ‘L’Arlesienne Suite No 1’, which David Kettle in his very helpful programme notes explained was written to accompany a play of the same name by Doudet. Sadly, the play only survived for 21 performances whereas Bizet’s music went on to become very familiar indeed. There is a very good saxophone solo in the work, very abled played by Lewis Banks, which David Kettle says was the first prominent saxophone solo since its invention in 1844 by Adolphe Sax. Francois Leleux conducted this work, which is clearly very familiar to him; although pleasant enough it compares badly to the genius of Bizet in for example ‘Carmen’, but then as David Kettle tells us it was put together in a short time; unfortunately it shows.
The new work was a world premiere Oboe Concerto, written for Francois Leleux by his old friend, French composer Laurent Petigirard. It was named ‘Souen Wou K’ong ‘, based on the Chinese novel ‘Journey to the West’ which tells of a Buddhist monk’s travels from China to India with three companions in search of sacred scriptures. This became better known by the Japanese TV series ‘Monkey’, which was very popular in Britain. The work certainly tested the ability of soloist Leloux and he shone in playing a difficult work. His attempts to conduct as well as playing were less convincing. He rightly played towards the audience with a score in front of him, and occasionally turning towards the orchestra and waving his oboe, but the players largely had their eyes on the score. The music itself had some melody it wasn’t totally ‘plinky plonky’ like some modern music and you could tell it was trying to create the oriental atmosphere of the journey. Leleux certainly was on top of its intricacies, but I have to say I found it underwhelming and suspect that unlike Bizet’s work it won’t still be played in 100 years’. My opinion of the work was confirmed by most of the audience I spoke to at the interval. Unlike some critics I am very interested in what people think of the performance and most were pretty negative. The harpist Eleanor Hudson confirmed that it was a very difficult work for the SCO to play; and they did it very well, but I still found it underwhelming.
Fortunately, we had Beethoven’s Second Symphony to look forward to after the interval and a stripped down ‘chamber music size’ SCO tackled it with verve. Having just returned from Vienna (see my opera reviews) I felt very at home with this symphony composed in 1801 in the Viennese village (now suburb) of Heiligenstadt. The Second is not as popular as Beethoven’s other symphonies but on this performance, it does deserve more frequent outings. Although he was increasingly depressed by his deafness at this time, he wrote his famous Testament, dedicating his life to make revolutionary music. Although the second symphony is not as radical some of his later works it contains seeds of the future and it is upbeat and sunny. It was premiered in 1803, along with his third piano concerto and an oratorio, plus the First Symphony (they liked to get their money’s worth in those days!). If you think this critic is tough David Kettle says one critic in Vienna wrote “The Second Symphony is a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to die!” For me it remains a great work and the Queens Hall audience gave it a warm response and several curtain-calls for Francois Leleux who demonstrated once more that he is a great conductor, as well as a fine soloist.
