Riccardo Chailly - Stravinsky: Ballets (2003)

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. Everything tells, much as it does in the Scherzo fantastique – whether the euphonious winds and brass at 3'52", the motorised repeated notes later on or the ornamental swirlings that, in stylistic terms, dance us all the way from Rimsky's Arabian Nights to the unmistakably Russian world of The Firebird.
Apollon musagète is something else again, and Chailly takes the lyrical line, pointing without punching and allowing his excellent strings their head. The coda is jaunty, the 'Apothéose' suitably mysterious, and 'Variation d'Apollon' features fine solo work from the orchestra's leader, Jaap van Zweden. Viable alternatives include leaner, more ascetic readings, but Chailly balances gracefulness with tonal substance and the sound is glorious.