★★★★☆
The first stop was Dresden, 1845. The destination was Paris, 16 years later, and a premiere that influenced a generation of French composers. In François-Xavier Roth’s exquisite reading of Wagner’s overture to Tannhäuser with the London Symphony Orchestra, the bronzed and cobalt hues of the penitential pilgrims to Rome were shooed away in a hot flurry of ribbons, tulle, satin and whalebone. This was Venusberg as a corps de ballet dressing room with a final chord shaped as a kiss.
Roth is a remarkable stylist, attentive to felicities of articulation that can make the flimsiest composition seem substantial, at least for a moment. He had his work cut out with Lalo’s Cello Concerto, written two years after his Symphonie espagnole. Despite the elegance of the soloist Edgar Moreau’s playing, the deep ruby glow of a tone that was immaculately connected from open string to harmonic, and trills like pin-tucked shot silk, this is paper-moon music.
Pseudo-Spanish decorative details for flutes are draped prettily over the Intermezzo, but the Germanic interjections from the orchestra in the first movement hiccup heavily, as though Lalo had swallowed Brahms and Schumann whole and was suffering from terrible indigestion. Compiled from scraps and sketches, the material in Debussy’s Première suite d’orchestre, performed for the first time in the UK by Roth and the LSO, was almost as banal.
If the melodic motifs of Ballet smacked of the oriental stereotypes in a Tintin adventure, the sparkle and fragrance of the instrumentation here, in the blissful dance of Fête and the opulent colours of Cortège et Bacchanale point to the brilliance of what Debussy would later achieve. Orchestrated by Philippe Manoury, Rêve was less convincing. The Suite from Massenet’s Le Cid was delivered with panache, pepper and lickety-split spiccato from the strings; a Franco-Iberian finale to a tasting menu with no main course.