reviewvancouver: Tea & Trumpets Series - J’dore Paris, John Jane

For this Tea & Trumpets concert, the fourth of the season, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra take the audience on an afternoon excursion to the City of Light. The concert begins in rousing fashion with Georges Bizet's famous Farandole from L'Arlésienne, Suite No.2. The melody is based on an old song from Provence that incorporates the theme of the March of the Kings that is also heard in Suite No.1. Maestro David Bui’s reading is robust and an ideal work to begin a concert.

Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld Overture has a beautifully played clarinet opening, followed by a solo on the cello. The musicians really come into their own with Galop Infernal - more popularly known as the Can-Can.

Opening with Christie Reside’s flute solo, Claude Debussy's enchanting tone poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, the orchestra offers a beguiling performance. With its lush score, it is evocative of a faun reveling in the pleasures of the forest.

When finding oneself in Paris, why not go to an opera? Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah is a cautionary tale of sorts, but there is nothing cautionary about Danse Bacchanale delivered with percussion to spare.

I had not known about Gabriel Fauré being the choice of English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell to score the incidental music for a London production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande. That is before Christopher Gaze’s explanation in his introduction. Nonetheless, I’m sure that many in the audience would have recognized the tender, light-textured music of Sicilienne.

The song La Vie en Rose has always been associated as Édith Piaf's signature work. True, she did write the lyrics and probably performed the song in public hundreds of times. However, what we heard this afternoon was not Piaf’s optimistic lyrics, but cosmopolitan film composer Louis Guglielmi’s haunting melody.

The advertised program ended with an orchestral medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. Lloyd Webber's gift to the global theatre-going public is a grandiose gothic romance that is set in a subterranean labyrinth below the Paris Opéra House. The medley featured the signature tune (of course), "Music of the Night" and “Think of Me.” Christopher Gaze brought generous applause from the audience for his dramatic recitation of the lyrics of Music of the Night.