Santtu conducts French masterpieces

Debussy’s sensuous Rhapsody for clarinet and orchestra is an opportunity to savour the skill of Mark van de Wiel, Principal Clarinet of the Philharmonia Orchestra since 2000.

Then Javier Perianes, a soloist known equally for his brilliant technique and for his grace and ease on the concert platform, joins the orchestra in Saint-Saëns’s last piano concerto. Saint-Saëns loved to escape the Paris winter, and wrote this beguiling piece on holiday in Luxor. A Nile boatman’s song is threaded through the concerto’s second movement, and the influence of Javanese and Spanish music can be heard too. But it’s Saint-Saëns’s own masterly writing for both soloist and orchestra that makes this hugely enjoyable piece worthy of a place among the greats of the piano concerto repertoire.

Franck’s Symphony in D minor was ubiquitous all over Europe and the US for many decades, as popular as symphonies by Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. It’s less frequently programmed now, but its organ-like layers of orchestral sound, the way its themes reappear transformed throughout its three movements, and the lovely cor anglais melody over harp and pizzicato (plucked) strings at its heart, make for a rewarding listen.