Stravinsky The Rite of Spring Debussy Opera Paris Jordan

Among the many recorded versions of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring that appeared around the work's centennial year, several were of piano transcriptions, in most cases Stravinsky's own four-hand piano arrangement. The 5 Browns' live recording presents a five-pianos version by Jeffrey Shumway that shows the family of virtuoso pianists in various combinations, from the single note at the opening to all ten hands by the ballet's clangorous end. The group deserves kudos for performing this tour de force without scores, and for making it work without a conductor.

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.

Klaus Mäkelä brings the Orchestre de Paris to Decca Classics for a major new album of Stravinsky’s most iconic ballet scores. The album represents Mäkelä’s first recording with his French orchestra, which will be followed by a further Ballet Russes release in 2024 featuring Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Debussy’s Jeux and L’Apres midi d’une faune.

For this live album, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales present Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps with Francis Poulenc's Les biches in remarkably vivid performances, under the direction of Thierry Fischer. The most distinctive characteristic of this reading of Le Sacre is the independence of the lines, which are interpreted with a certain individuality that gives the music great flexibility, notably in the woodwinds' contrapuntal passages. Les biches has a bright neo-classical quality that is emphasized by the winds' incisive attacks, brisk tempos overall, and the transparent tone colors of the orchestra.

State-of-the-art audio reproduction at the beginning of the 21st century may be the finest ever achieved, but the increasing reissues of historic audiophile recordings provide ample evidence that the search for spectacular sound has been going on for many years. In 1960, Eugene Goossens and the London Symphony Orchestra recorded Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps on 35mm three-track magnetic film, and the quality of the recording is so close-up and realistic that the term "almost palpable" is not an exaggeration…