Menuet antique - Ravel
Gloria - Poulenc
Sheherazade - Ravel
Bacchus et Ariane:Suite no.2 - Roussel
Each nation of the west probably has its own imaginative conception of the Orient, based on newspaper reports and versions of the Arabian Nights. The prose poems by Tristan Klingsor that Ravel set in his Sheherazade have a slightly perverse sensuality which is exquisitely mirrored in the music, but which cannot be easy for non-French musicians to reproduce.
Cara O'Sullivan was meltingly voluptuous in some of her phrasing, but at other moments, introduced an unwelcome tinge of realism. The "smiling assassins" should be as unreal and as alluring as the "princesses with tiny hands". Takuo Yuasa and the NSO missed that epitome of refinement that gives the work its decadent enchantment.
Poulenc's Gloria for soprano, choir and orchestra is a characteristically quirky setting of a religious text. It is hard to believe in its religious inspiration and one could imagine the music working as well, or better, as a setting of words by Cocteau. The RTE Philharmonic Choir provided a rich and satisfying body of sound, untroubled by doubts of a theological nature, and did not shirk the playboy element in Poulenc's approach.
Ravel's orchestration of his early piano piece, Menuet antique, is interesting for its orchestration, as is Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane, but the latter offers much more of interest, ranging from the delicate and suggestive to the positively rambunctious. Friday's concert in the NCH ended triumphantly with this glorification of the dance.