On the radio, what you notice first about John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London concerts is the pinpoint quality of the orchestra’s sound. But that is nothing compared to the experience of listening to it live in the Royal Albert Hall, where the vivid immediacy of the playing that he conjures from his musicians is the hallmark attraction of any Wilson Prom. Speaking from recent experience, it is a bit like regaining 20:20 vision after years of peering through the misty glaze of cataracts.
This precision was instantly apparent in the crystalline woodwind opening of Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps, orchestrated shortly before the composer’s early death in 1918, and in the softer and darker writing into which this delicately formed five-minute miniature briefly broadens.
