Merlin Music Society, Blake Theatre (From South Wales Argus)

Merlin Music Society, Blake Theatre

3:01pm Wednesday 15th February 2012 in Entertainments By Nigel Jarrett

Gratitude for small mercies is often a feature of one's response to music that is less than successful or barely convincing.

This is especially true of works cast in one form then, for a variety of reasons, converted to another.

In the original, Debussy's Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra proved to be an irksome commission that had to be completed after the composer's death by Jean Roger-Ducasse.

But at least the result was integrated and novel. Reduced and mutated to a piece for cor anglais and piano, as played here by the excellent twosome of oboist James Turnbull and pianist Elizabeth Burgess, it's a flop.

The small mercy was that its performance allowed the cor anglais to be brought on to the platform for variety's sake, albeit to prove that historically it was never going to enjoy solo status.

The same goes for a transcription by the oboist Christian Schmitt of six movements from Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin. Lacking neither the keyboard character of the first version nor the fortification of the orchestral one, it's a curate's egg.

However, a remarkable performance of Poulenc's Oboe Sonata outweighed everything in giving the seriousness of this often diverting composer its due. Smooth contours, exquisite tenderness, perfect accord. Even the tightly-structured approach to the Sonata Op.166 by Saint-Saens couldn't match it.

Pity the oboist on these occasions. Makeweights by Bozza and Deslandres, slight but testing, were mere adjuncts to double-reed blowing of prodigious capacity from start to finish. It takes it out of you. While Ms Burgess played Ravel's Pavane he took a break.