L’oiseau de Soleil – Wilbur Smith

XIXe siècle. Une jeune fille, médecin, part à la recherche de son père, missionnaire et explorateur célèbre qui a disparu au cœur du continent noir. Le premier de la série de quatre ouvrages de la série Ballantyne…

Igor Stravinsky is revealed here in all his diverse genius. Between the shimmering world of Russian folk traditions and the Apollonian cosmos of Greek mythology, he creates two radically different and protean musical universes.For their second recording with harmonia mundi, Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg reveal the splendours of these two major ballets of the early Twentieth Century.

Post-Romantic dazzle in The Firebird (1910), neo-classical elegance in Apollon musagète (1928): Igor Stravinsky is revealed here in all his diverse genius. Between the shimmering world of Russian folk traditions and the Apollonian cosmos of Greek mythology, he creates two radically different and protean musical universes.

Stravinsky did three orchestral versions of his famous ballet, The Firebird (1910). The two that are mostly played today are a shorter version arranged in 1945, which is about 30 minutes long, and the original ballet suite, which is more than 45 minutes long. This is that version. The extended repeats and transitional material, in the right hands, give the whole work a decidedly spectral character. This, Boulez does expertly. (And the CSO has never sounded so…light on its feet.) Also here is the early Fireworks, where you can almost hear The Firebird approaching. The Four Etudes for Orchestra finish the disc like a snifter of brandy. –Paul Cook

After two albums devoted to Italian bel canto and De Falla's Spain respectively, the Orchestre national d'Île-de-France heads to France and invite us to dance with a third collection dedicated to ballet music created at the Paris Opera. Rare and unfairly overlooked, La Bien aimée is a gem of collage technique, Milhaud's work juxtaposing the music of Schubert and Liszt and arranging it for pianola (player piano) and orchestra. Meanwhile, Stravinsky's Firebird, that incontrovertible masterpiece, transports us to the enchanting world of Russian fairy tales under Enrique Mazzola's exalted baton.