Sunday 7 May 2000 Victoria Concert Hall	CASUAL CONCERT French Flair Explained
	Georges BIZET (1838-1875) Overture, Seguidilla, Habañera and Chanson Bohème from Carmen Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937) Pavane for a Dead Princess Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921) Printemps qui commence, Bacchanale and Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix from Samson et Delilah Paul DUKAS (1865-1935) The Sorceror's Apprentice YANG Jie mezzo-soprano Bart FOLSE conductor

OVERALL NOISE RATING: 5 (Bawling kids, beepers and the two ladies in W 19-20 who refused to shut up even after being told off by an irate member of the audience.)

The Noise Rating Index is a partially-objective measurement of pager and handphone blasts, 9pm and 10pm watch beeps, coughing-during-the-pianissimo-bits, intra-audience conversation and other mind-bogglingly inept noises emitted in the concert hall during actual performance of music. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 5, in increasing annoyance.

This is the second of two Casual Concerts held on consecutive weeks, both of which (to coin an understatement) have played to less than full houses. Last week it was Petri Sakari and Vladimir Ovchinnikov on Teutonic Romantic repertoire (their full concerts are reviewed here); this week it's Bart Folse and Yang Jie on quote French Flair Explained unquote, with a slightly reduced programme from what they'd already done on the preceding Friday and Saturday evenings.

The selection of repertoire isn't too bad, actually. We haven't (to coin another understatement) had too many vocalists on the programme this season, and despite all the rolling of eyes from some jaded concertgoers I've seen when Carmen and Pavane and Bacchanale get mentioned, this is quite a rewarding programme especially for first-timers.

In keeping with the informality, Bart gave a short intro before launching into the Overture to Carmen. The full-sized orchestra sounded too loud and opulent for the empty hall, but I don't think anyone minded. This rambunctious opening set the stage for Yang Jie's rendition of three items from Carmen, although maybe the concert hall manager should look into relocating the spotlight on the soloist's space next to the conductor such that their faces don't disappear into what theatre people call a "dark spot".

This is the sixth time she's performing with the orchestra (and next week she makes it number seven with Beethoven's Ninth). The Seguidilla and Habañera were both attacked hard - one senses that this was deliberate - albeit with fairly solid technique, although the songs lacked punch without the original choral accompaniment (substituted by winds in this rendition). Yang's affected mannerisms worked much better for the flamenco-like Chanson Bohème, infusing it with a gypsy character.

The serene Pavane for a Dead Princess came as a dénouement after the three fiery airas, with the orchestra responsive to Folse. The solo horn sounded unsteady carrying the main theme at the beginning of the work, but only momentarily.

The second half was much less enjoyable, but perhaps not for the reasons one might think. Bart Folse took to the stage alone with a sheaf of questions to answer - this being a Casual Concert, after all - and apologized for Ms Yang's absence, explaining about her lack of confidence with English and also her shyness about answering questions, and volunteering to answer on her behalf.

Now, I'm not saying that a shy opera singer is unheard of, nor that Folse is incapable of answering on her behalf, he being classically trained in opera and all. Actually, I very much sympathize with shy musicians unfluent in English who'd rather perform for than to talk to their audiences - but how did a public-shy artiste get lined up for a Casual Concert? Artiste management, please try harder next time.

Question of the Day Q: Miss Yang Jie is Chinese, yet she looks like European. Why ? Folse: When she comes on stage to perform, she wears a lot of makeup - sometimes it's quite heavy - and she also dresses very much into the character. In these pieces, she'd playing Carmen, a Spanish gypsy girl who works in a cigarette factory, she smokes and flirts with men, and then in the Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah she's Delilah, who[sic] again has a lot of exotic influences. It has a lot to do with portraying the character and sometimes it means trying to dress up and looking like it.

(Professor Ovchinnikov, not exactly a paragon of the English language, took to the stage alongside Petri Sakari last week. He fielded his share of the questions - more than Sakari, in fact - and told some great anecdotes that had everyone in stitches, too.)

Folse did make a very good solo attempt to answer the questions, but his dialogue (sort of) was constantly interrupted by a battery of wailing babes-in-arms from somewhere a third of the way down the concert hall from the back.

Perhaps this has been mentioned before, but as long as the problem persists, it perhaps cannot be mentioned enough: management, please educate parents that babes-in-arms who are obviously too young to understand what's going on should not be brought to 'live' concerts. Casual Concert or not, other people have paid good money for the performance and crying babies are an absolute disaster for everyone, from musicians to parents to audience.

I suppose this also applies to adults who associate "casual" with "permission to talk while the concert is being played", such as the two ladies in W 19 & 20, among others, but these people are much harder to curb (you can't put pacifiers in their mouths, for example) and I doubt if the orchestral management is ready to adopt a policy of expulsion for talkative concertgoers.

Be that as it may, Folse struck up another exciting performance of the Bacchanale from Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah. Again, a lot of detail in the middle-range instruments were lost in the reverberance of the concert hall, but everyone managed to hold their part together. Barring the noise from the kids, Yang Jie's two arias "Printemps qui commence" and "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix" were ravishingly beautiful; gone was the extravagance of the wild gypsy and here came the sensitivity of the dusky Philistine beauty. (Pity the Philistines in the audience were much less sensitive.)

The concert concluded with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and another uncompromisingly boisterous performance from the orchestra. The humourous broomstick theme (on bassoon and other winds) had the audience in quiet titters, and Folse (right) hit all the dramatic nuances just right. But for the noisy audience, this would have been a great concert.

There are the usual careless mistakes in the programme booklet (pages 2-3, 10-14, and on page 18, Bach's catalog index should be BWV, not BMV [Could have been worse: BMW - Ed.].) It still never fails to surprise me that with the entire concert season determined for months in advance, that so many unneccessary mistakes still appear in each week's booklet. (Not all the blame should go to Eureka Publicis.) I'd also point out that lyrics (and translation) for the operatic arias would not have been amiss, but maybe I'm already setting my expectations too high. William Beh

William feels that it's high time for a Leave Your Kids and Handphones At Home campaign at the SSO.

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708: 8.5.2000 ©William Beh

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