Album review: Simon Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps (EMI Classics)

 

Andy Gill
Friday 22 March 2013 20:00 GMT
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Simon Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps (EMI Classics)
Simon Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps (EMI Classics)

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Released to mark the centennial anniversary of its explosive premiere, Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker's Rite of Spring is instantly engrossing from the opening woodwind flourishes.

From there it's a whirlwind of dynamic contrasts, challenging the pagan gaiety of the Dudamel/SBYO version in its intensity. But it's programmed with two later Stravinsky works, the Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Apollon Musagète, in which similar folk-based materials and mythopoeic themes are fashioned into more sedate pieces whose congruent sonorities all but reject the modernist primitivism that made the composer's reputation, in favour of a more Romantic approach that is hugely disappointing.

Download: Le Sacre du Printemps

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