Igor Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps • Petrouchka - Sir Colin Davis, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

The Rite of Spring, commonly referred to by its original French title, Le Sacre du Printemps is a ballet with music by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, and original set design and costumes by archaeologist and painter Nicholas Roerich, all under impresario Serge Diaghilev. The music's innovative complex rhythmic structures, timbres, and use of dissonance have made it a seminal 20th century composition.

Petrouchka or Petrushka (French: Pétrouchka; Russian: Петрушка) is a ballet with music by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Petrushka is a story of a Russian traditional puppet, Petrushka, who is made of straw and with a bag of sawdust as his body, but who comes to life and develops emotions.

The orchestral playing in this recording is often breathtakingly wonderful, and all is captured in sound of magnificent realism. The playing is energetic and etched. Davis takes a sumptuous view of the Rite of Spring. Many of Stravinsky's orchestral colors are realized more vividly here than by most rivals. (The 5/4 sections of the concluding "Sacrificial Dance" are especially fine, the percussion managing to drive the orchestra without overwhelming it.) There are a few slips here and there; some are traditional misreadings found in virtually all recordings, and some are outright clangers that should have been fixed. Where Davis triumphs is in his ability to give the score (indeed, all these scores) a sense of momentum that many rival performances lack. (Other conductors typically project the Rite with more raw power, but as an ultimately less involving set of intricate tableaux.) These performances also benefit from some truly magnificent playing–the opening bassoon solo hints at the joys to come. (Who is the player? Surely this solo played this well deserves a credit.) The recording features commendably realistic sound, with no gratuitous spot-miking–Philips' engineers no doubt correctly reasoned that such a great orchestra in such a great hall needed no special intervention.

Petrushka (here in the 1947 version) gets similar treatment. There are moments of wonderful insight, moments of spectacular playing, and some unfortunate letdowns–the linking drum passages are disappointingly irregular, the famous trumpet solo is rather precarious, and the (again, unnamed) pianist is somewhat lackluster. Against this, the conclusion (dropped tambourine and all) is moving like few others on disc, and there are moments of true orchestral splendor–as well as individual quirkiness, particularly in the bassoon section.

Dates of Recording: 11/1976 (Sacre), 10/1977 (Petrouchka)
Venue: Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands








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