RECORD OF MONTH
The Firebird ballet
is best heard complete where its narrative
shape is allowed to emerge with dramatic
inevitability. Dorati completes the
whole score in record time and it works
like a dream or more accurately like
a fairy-tale. For a recording made in
1959 the Mercury team of Cozart and
Fine produced astonishingly detailed
results. Not only is the sound subtle
and wide-ranging it has an nuanced atmospheric
signature that wins it friends whenever
reissued. I have heard various versions
over the years including Haitink (Philips)
and Stravinsky (Sony) and I would not
want to be without this. I first fell
under the spell of this disc when it
was issued for £1.00 on the super-budget
Contour LP label (6870 574). Then it
was reissued on Mercury CD 432 0122
coupled exactly as on this disc. The
music sinuously spins its spell and
traces its lineage back to Stravinsky’s
teacher Rimsky-Korsakov (Antar,
Sadko, Sheherazade, Golden
Cockerel) rather like the supernatural
fabled tapestry explored by Prokofiev
in his First Violin Concerto and similar
though less claustrophobic to Griffes’
Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan.
Gradually Stravinsky peeled away from
such frank romanticism becoming increasingly
‘objective’ from The Rite to
Petrushka and onwards and outwards.
If the years have left a suggestion
of steel in the LSO violin tone that
is the only artefact, apart from a low
level analogue ‘shush’, that dates this
recording. Otherwise the sound is something
to revel in; to put it another way you
soon cease to perceive the sound and
listen to the music now laid bare with
sensuous transparency.
Presentation is good
with the ballet in 21 tracks and fully
annotated in the booklet. Fireworks
was the work that drew Diaghilev
to commission The Firebird from
Stravinsky. It is a peacock of a piece
- a roman candle, spilling sparks of
many colours. Tango is
a game little work with a prominent
role for guitar and a bitter leaning
towards Weill. More commercial is the
Scherzo written in 1944
for the Paul Whiteman Band - it is excitingly
rhythmic, not neo-classical, lemon bitter
and bumptiously confident. The
Nightingale tone poem is an
offshoot from his 1914 opera taken under
Diaghilev’s wing when the composer was
let down. Here the style is much more
astringent - an emerging modest dissonance
links with Petrushka.
This disc represents
one of the last century’s greatest recordings.
If you have any affection for the Russian
tradition or for unbridled voluptuous
orchestral extravagance sensationally
recorded then this must be on your shopping
list.
Rob Barnett
London Symphony Orchestra/Antal Dorati 
MERCURY
LIVING PRESENCE 470 643-2 [76:47] 