Stravinsky Suita Italian

Violinist Kyung-Wha Chung's highly intense compelling performances especially in the Prokofiev Concerti here have made them favorites in Decca's catalogue for years. Rather than purely dwell on the technical rigor these works demand (as many violinists often do), Chung instead focuses more on Prokofiev's lyricism in an effort to draw out the full and varied range of emotional qualities in the score. Conductor Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra couldn't be more understanding and supportive collaborators and Decca's sound, while spotlighting Chung slightly, is quite good.

Stravinsky’s Perséphone (1934) is a dynamic music-theatrical narration of the myth of Persephone’s abduction to the underworld and return to earth. The transparent, sober but evocative music epitomizes Stravinsky’s sensuous take on Neoclassicism, and the piece showcases Stravinsky’s eclectic, original and highly personal approach to music and musical drama through a playful mixture of several genres – melodrama, song, chorus, dance and pantomime. Ultimately, Perséphone offers Stravinsky’s second ode to spring, albeit without the brutal excesses of Le Sacre.

This is a great little set, coupling a ravishing Apollon musagète with a truly stunning Rite ofSpring. The Petrushka is equally fine. The fact that Stravinsky's revision of Apollon dispensed with 'half the woodwind, two of the three harps, glockenspiel and celesta from the original scoring' hardly constitutes the bleaching process that a less colour-sensitive performance might have allowed. Part of the effect comes from a remarkably fine recording where clarity and tonal bloom are complementary, but Chailly must take the credit for laying all Stravinsky's cards on the table rather than holding this or that detail to his chest.

The earliest piece on this disc is the delightful Pastorale, written in 1907, when Stravinsky was 25; the latest is the enigmatic Epitaphium, written 52 years later. In between come a clutch of pieces from that fascinating period of Stravinsky’s life when he was moving from Russianism to neo-classicism via jazz. The remaining two, the Octet of 1923 and the Septet of 1953, are both firmly in Stravinsky’s witty, poised neo-classical style, though the Septet is moving towards new, tougher territory. Stravinsky himself made classic recordings of these pieces in the Sixties, now reissued on CD on the Sony label. These are always electric, if sometimes a little untidy, and so closely recorded you feel the players are sitting in your lap. By that lofty benchmark this new recording measures up superbly. Tempos are just as brisk and alert as Stravinsky’s, the accents just as incisive. These qualities are combined with a beautiful soft-grained tone – a nice change from Stravinsky’s lemon-sharp sound.

Igor Stravinsky is not a composer who is usually associated with symphonic form. Five of his compositions bear that name, however, even though they have little in common. The first major work Stravinsky composed entirely in the United States, the Symphony in Three Movements seems to pick up where the Rite of Spring left off with its rhythmic ostinatos and shock effects. It can be interpreted as the composer’s response to the Second World War, which was ravaging Europe at the time of its composition, and its striking and triumphant conclusion appears to echo of what the composer must have felt. The Symphonies of Wind Instruments, a short, compact work, was a tribute to Stravinsky’s friend and colleague Claude Debussy.

To mark his debut on Deutsche Grammophon with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin pays tribute to his legendary predecessor on the podium, Leopold Stokowski. The transcriptions of Bach's organ music are among Stokowski's most celebrated achievements, and none is more famous than his expansive arrangement of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which was prominently featured in Walt Disney's Fantasia. It's a classic showpiece for the orchestra, as are Stokowski's fulsome orchestrations of the "Little" Fugue in G minor, and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.