Released at the beginning of the year, this disc has long been unavailable in Canada. The wait was relatively worth it, because this is a “light music” program of the “New Year’s concert in Vienna” genre, but with French music, a repertoire that was not really more fashionable, for chefs, to save. A questionable aspect of the publication, the very dry acoustics of the Raymond Devos theater in Tourcoing gives the whole a sound image evoking more the bandstand than the concert hall, as if the entertainment was consumed “in passing”. What is much more serious is the program put together by the Palazzetto Bru Zane with classics of the genre, such as the Skaters Waltz of Waldteufel or extracts of Coppelia of Delibes and the ballet Faust by Gounod, but also works by Théodore Dubois, Jeanne Danglas, Victorin de Joncières and Isaac Strauss. It is this relevant and original documentation, more than Roth’s icy direction (The ice skaters !), which makes the project interesting.
To see in video