Maurice Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé
Suite for Orchestra No. 2
Igor Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps
Arthur Honegger: Symphony No. 5 in D Major
‘Di Tre Re’
Wholenote Discoveries - September 2009
The late conductor/composer Igor Markevitch has ten different performances of Le Sacre du Printemps to be found on CD, in addition to a DVD with the Japan Philharmonic (1968). Stravinsky was antipathetic to conductors interpreting his works. His well known instruction was to simply play the scores as written because that is all there is to it. He endorsed only his amanuensis, Robert Craft, but had complimentary things to say about Igor Markevitch. An 11th CD of Le Sacre with Markevitch has appeared on the Audite label from Germany containing live performances from 1952 in Berlin. So what? Well, I’ll tell you what... Stravinsky’s shocker sounds unusually animated, lively and vibrant as Markevitch propels the now familiar score. There is a real sense of tense apprehension throughout, an atmosphere of inevitability absent from other performances. The RIAS Symphony Orchestra was a crack ensemble, comfortable with this complex score. Absolutely first-rate performances of the second suite from Daphnis and Chloë, another Markevitch show-piece, and the newly written Fifth Symphony of Honegger make this a CD worth owning. These were recorded by Deutschland Radio who made their master tapes available for the first time. The sound is state of the art for the time, far ahead of what was being achieved in North America... dynamic, transparent and finely detailed, leaving nothing to the listener’s imagination. Bruce Surtees
