Review: Les Vents FranÇais, Queen’s Hall
From the offset – Jacques Ibert’s energetic Trois Pièces Brèves, almost Grainger-esque in its repetitive folkish charm – the electricity pulsed through the ensemble, each player drawing mischievously pertinent attention to himself when the occasion called out. Never a dull moment.
Indeed, that magical combination of individual spirit and collective homogeneity ignited, magnesium-like, the filigree delicacies of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin (a nifty arrangement of four of its movements by Mason Jones), Milhaud’s charmingly eccentric La Cheminée du roi René and the liquid refinement of Paul Taffanel’s Quintet.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdBut even in the non-French hues of Samuel Barber’s airy Summer Music and the deliciously flirtatious Humoreske of Alexander von Zemlinsky, fluid and magnetic physicality remained the watchword of these exceptional players.
Without a doubt, a world-beating ensemble for which one can truly claim the glorious whole is hugely greater than the sum of its virtuosic parts.