Why are there so few decent French symphonies?

Here’s a blind-listening game for you: spot the difference between proficiency and genius. Kazuki Yamada and his Monte-Carlo orchestra have recorded three first symphonies by three 19th-century French composers. With a few barnstorming exceptions (I’m looking at you, Berlioz), the French never really got the hang of the romantic symphony. Berlioz recounts with horror how Parisian editors picked through the scores of Beethoven’s symphonies, meticulously correcting Big Ludwig’s supposed errors.

 The kindest thing to say about the first symphonies of Gounod and Saint-Saëns is that they sound like Beethoven with the inspiration snipped out. Bright, polite and completely harmless, they’re both blown out of the water by the 17-year-old Bizet’s glorious Symphony in C. Incredibly, Bizet modelled his symphony directly on Gounod’s (they were pupil and teacher) but it’s the difference between a porcelain doll and a living thing. Such melodies; such élan! Unsurprisingly from the future composer of Carmen, Bizet’s student project bubbles and brims with the warm south. You can feel the Provençal sunshine, and the heat haze that shimmers over Bizet’s sultry slow movement.

Perhaps a touch of Mediterranean languor crept into the recording sessions too, because Yamada sounds altogether more leisurely than on the occasions when I’ve heard him live with the CBSO. A little more mischief and bounce might have helped the Bizet, though the Gounod and Saint-Saëns symphonies are charming enough as they bustle through their performing poodle routines. Gounod lived to tell his former student that Carmen was ‘all sauce and no fish’. Funny how these things play out.