SCO & François Leleux - Bizet & Gounod - The Scotsman

This is a delightful French feast. For starters, French chef d’orchestre, conductor François Leleux, serves up familiar titbits from Bizet’s opera Carmen, courtesy of Ernest Guiraud’s Concert Suite No 1, in the arrangement he made after Bizet’s death. Leleux elicits a balanced variety of warmth and nimble lucidness from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, either in the sweet intimacy of the Intermezzo or the rousing tutti of Les toréadors. Gounod’s Petite Symphonie, for winds only, is similarly rich in flavours, its smooth, stately opening, the tender arioso Andante, the vigorous Scherzo and whimsical, operatic Finale, all freshly and imaginatively presented. 
The meat comes last, in Bizet’s Symphony in C, not his most original music, but full of the joys of Spring. Leleux’s reading is graceful yet thrilling, thoughtful but not without its pleasurable frissons.