At this season's Grange Festival, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is in the pit for Annabel Arden's new production of Carmen. The first half of this concert could easily have been a rehearsal. Beneath the garish burnt orange panels of Basingstoke's Anvil, violinist Alexandra Soumm, dressed in a striking scarlet gown which would grace any traditional staging of Bizet's classic, was the soloist in Lalo's Symphonie espagnole. Her reading was boldly operatic, from earthy mezzo G-string recitatives to coquettish teasing.
Lalo composed this concerto in all but name for the great virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, the first performance taking place in 1875 just a month before the première of Carmen. Spanish character oozes from every bar. Soumm's tone had plenty of weight in an opening movement full of dark, sultry utterances, but her softer playing entranced too, the Scherzando taunted kittenishly with its snapping steps and laughing trills. In the Intermezzo, she seemed to be playing both characters in an operatic duet before finding the emotional heart of the work in the Andante. There was no tragic end for this Carmen; Soumm directed the rondo's flirtatious phrases towards conductor James Gaffigan – enough to make any Don José blush! It was exuberant, joyous music-making, the Bournemouth players happy to join in the fun.
This sunny slice of Seville formed the centrepiece of a programme that completely lived up to its seductive “Exotic Spice” billing. The other two works – Debussy's erotic Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Rimsky-Korsakov's Arabian Nights fantasy Scheherazade – particularly benefited from being heard in the splendid Anvil acoustic, far finer than any of London's larger concert halls. The sound is warm, but not overly reverberant, and every instrumental detail registers, from Eluned Pierce's dramatic harp flourishes, as Scheherazade weaves her tales, to the Faune's antique cymbals, struck by two percussionists and gently shaken to allow their fragile chimes to waft and decay.