Paavo Jarvi and the 35 musicians of the Tapiola Sinfonietta are competent and stylish in this repertoire. The first item, Poulenc's Sinfonietta, is a substantial latish work (1947), but not all that familiar. Oddly enough, it was commissioned for the BBC Third Programme, and the composer, finding himself short of ideas, produced his score by reworking a discarded string quartet. The mood is generally light, and he himself wondered if he'd ''dressed too young for his age'', but few will object when there is so much invention. This performance effectively blends charm, wit and sensuality, although the rich, recorded sound, attractive in itself, deprives the instrumentation of some of its characteristic edge.
Jolivet's Flute Concerto, written a year later and dedicated to Jean-Pierre Rampal, is sterner stuff, befitting this serious-minded member of the Jeune France movement. This, too, comes across well with a soloist whose teachers included Galway and Nicolet; indeed, it is done with the right rhythmic and tonal flexibility, although I must confess that, not for the first time, the composer's language seems to me dry and self-conscious. I prefer Roussel's Sinfonietta, a work written in his sixties, and not long before his death, but offering a stronger impulse within a neo-classical idiom. Ibert's madly laughter-inducing Divertissement is, of course, the most uninhibited work in this programme and Jarvi and his orchestra give it much panache. All in all, a useful disc.'