A Small Oboe Festival: François Leleux and the Sydney Symphony Play Bach, Ravel and Mozart by Andrew Miller

Ravel-et-al-petit


Ravel with friends Maurice and Nelly Delage and Suzanne Roland-Manuel. Photo by Roland-Manuel?

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House: 2 March 2012

J. S. Bach – Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066
Maurice Ravel - Le Tombeau de Couperin
Mozart – Oboe Concerto in C Major, K 314

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra
François Leleux – oboe-director

Whoever says that the Sydney Opera House doesn’t function should visit on a day like last Friday morning. On this fairly typical day, there were six separate shows, concerts and plays scheduled — it is not an opera house at all but a true complex of theaters and concert halls. Neither the large group of Japanese schoolgirls touring the building, nor the long queue of people after tickets to the Olivia Newton-John concert that evening, nor the individual tourists looking around and photographing, nor the people for the Sydney Symphony concert (the Olivia Newton-John fans didn’t know what they missed) who arrived early for the morning tea set out for us under the vaulted lunes of the concert hall foyer, got in one another’s way. It was crowded for sure, and they could use a few more lady’s rooms, but miraculously there was room to move. The building works!

Leleux had put together a program of classics, well known but in playing he brought them a freshness and bright enthusiasm as if encountering them for the first time. He played, in both senses of the word, in an unlabored way even in the more difficult sections, even while his technique proved his mastery of the instrument and all the work and practice that entailed. His honest and lively playing was infectious. The musicians seemed not like performers set up on stage and weighted by everyone’s eyes and ears and expectations set on them, but they gave the impression of artists playing music for its own sake in private, the listeners seemed not exactly an audience but more invitees to share in the experience, the exploration of the music anew.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!