Fresh Off the Boat

Thirty years ago, France's finest orchestra, the 90-year-old Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris, was embarked on a U.S. warship, destination New York. At their first concert in the Metropolitan Opera House, damp-eyed crowds cheered, for it was wartime, and the orchestra started off an evening of French masters with an unforgettable lump-in-the-throat performance of La Marseillaise. Banker Otto H. Kahn made an appropriate speech: "If we ever failed to understand her, the great soul of France now stands revealed in splendor."

Last week, for the first time since then, the U.S. saw & heard another French orchestra. This time, the musicians of the Orchestre National of France (France's equivalent of England's BBC orchestra) were greeted only by a French welcoming committee and a handful of curious bystanders. But these 96 men were just as determined as their predecessors to reveal the great soul of France. And they had France's best conductor to lead them, Charles Muench, who will become permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony next fall (TIME, April 19).

Their first concert was in Bridgeport, Conn., in a kind of sneak preview before their big night in Carnegie Hall. After five curtain calls, Musical Director Henry Barraud asked an American: "Is that good? In France that would be very good."

Then, at week's end, a Carnegie Hall audience, harder to please, discovered that a French orchestra is more than just another orchestra that happens to come from France: it has a tonal quality all its own. To most U.S. ears, used to lush, soaring strings, France's finest sounded a little thin. True to French tradition, the woodwind choir was outstanding (many a top U.S. woodwind player learned his trade from the French). Some in the audience missed the drilled precision of U.S. orchestras. Explained Director Barraud: "Our musicians are individualists. I don't mean that one violinist will be pushing up his bow while another is pulling his down, but there are differences in technique. We may not be so mechanically perfect--but we sound better." Few listeners were ready to go that far, but most agreed that the French orchestra had a cleanness and agility that many a U.S. orchestra lacks.

Before the Orchestre National goes home in December, 32 other U.S. and Canadian cities will get a chance to hear the French accent.

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