Search - Stravinsky, Dutoit, Osm :: Apollon Musagete

Elegant readings of four neoclassic notables

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 06/05/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Critics groused at the time -- the early Twenties -- when the revolutionary Stravinsky gave up the hair-raising barbarism of 'Le sacre' for the pale, cool temple of neoclassicism. There was general shock, as if Lenin had given up the people's struggle, that an icon of modernism should go soft. But Stravinsky stuck to his guns through The Rake's Progress in 1950, a lng fertile stretch that produced many masterpieces.



Here we have four restrained works, two for small orchestra, two for strings. The major work is Apollo -- traveling under its original title, Apollon musaget, or "Apollo, inspirer of the Muses" -- which marked Stravinsky's first collaboration with Balanchine in 1927-28. The last work to be composed, Concerto in D from 1946, was turned into Jerome Robbins's most famous early ballet, The Cage. S dance rhythms and concerto grosso form are the dominant theme.



One could be forgiven for finding this CD much of a muchness. Dutoit conducts in a uniformly suave, elegant style, somewhat more romanticized than Stravinsky's acerbic podium style. I don't think anything on this 1994 release surpasses the authoritative accounts we have from the composer and his close associate, Ernest Ansermet. Even Robert Craft, hardly a maestro, is more energetic in all these works. But I have never heard them better played technically, and Decca's sound is impeccable."