French Orchestral Favourites – John Wilson

Since John Wilson relaunched Sinfonia of London in 2018, his hand-picked orchestra has attracted the highest critical acclaim from both national and international press, performed at the BBC Proms every year since 2021 (their live début), and made their international début at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam in 2025. Regularly touring in the UK, they have also released twenty-five albums (this is the twenty-sixth) covering a wide and varied range of repertoire, from Rachmaninoff to Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Opera and ballet were the dominant musical genres in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century France, and French orchestral music was much more poetic and narrative than the contrasting German symphonic tradition. Master-orchestrators such as Debussy and Ravel drew extraordinary colours and textures from the symphony orchestra, making their works perennial favourites with audiences around the world. Sinfonia of London perform this repertoire with absolute precision and finesse. The album is recorded in surround sound, and is available in Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio and as a hybrid SACD.