Some listeners may seek out this Signum Classics album primarily for Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, but the best reason to hear it is for the performances of Maurice Ravel's Mother Goose and La Valse. Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra deliver atmospheric and delicate renditions of the five children's pieces in Mother Goose, as well as a vigorous and frenzied La Valse, and they are well-recorded performances, though their presence on this disc seems to have been an afterthought, as a match-up ...
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Some listeners may seek out this Signum Classics album primarily for Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, but the best reason to hear it is for the performances of Maurice Ravel's Mother Goose and La Valse. Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra deliver atmospheric and delicate renditions of the five children's pieces in Mother Goose, as well as a vigorous and frenzied La Valse, and they are well-recorded performances, though their presence on this disc seems to have been an afterthought, as a match-up for the Stravinsky. Notwithstanding La Valse's violence in its final measures, Ravel's delightful music is an odd choice for filler, especially for an uneven concert performance of the Rite. Temirkanov and St. Petersburg face considerable competition with numerous recordings of this ballet on the market, and to say that their playing is on the same level as the greatest recordings (many of which have been reissued for the 2013 celebration of the Rite's centennial), is going too far....
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