Jurowski Conducts Stravinsky, Vol. 2

Stravinsky: The Fairy’s Kiss; Tchaikovsky: Sleeping Beauty – excerpts (arr. Stravinsky)

London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vladimir Jurowski LPO LPO 0126 55:27 mins Jurowski applies his hallmark fastidiousness in close collaboration with LPO players, giving Stravinsky’s Tchaikovsky ballet an even more elegiac, intimate atmosphere than usual. The Hans Christian Andersen story of the boy marked at birth by an icy kiss which will see him carried off by the supernatural donor on the brink of human happiness deserves no less. Jurowski may stint a bit on the danceable qualities of the faster passages, but I’ve never heard the woodwind solos and groupings register so poignantly. All the more need for orchestral credits (sadly lacking in the booklet); but suffice it to say that should you want to know if this release is for you, try the flutegraced variation of the Pas de deux (Track 12), honouring Stravinsky at his most transcendent.

His own kiss is everywhere on the Tchaikovsky piano pieces and songs he adapts, the poignancy most indebted to another fairy-graced world, The Sleeping Beauty, the older composer’s most comprehensive masterpiece. It wasn’t a good idea to start with the ‘Bluebird’ Pas de deux, trimmed orchestration-wise for the New York Ballet Theatre at a time of wartime austerity, and sounding alarmingly thin and even shrill (uncharacteristic of the principal flute) in dry

Festival Hall acoustics. But you may like the few more individual touches applied to Aurora’s Act II variation and the violin-solo Entr’acte for Diaghilev’s attempt at the complete in 1921, when Tchaikovsky’s instrumentation for these previously cut numbers was missing. David Nice

PERFORMANCE ★★★★

RECORDING ★★★★