Stravinsky Firebird, Petrouchka, Le Sacre du Printemps, Bartok Miraculous Mandarin : Dohnanyi / Maazel / Vienna Philharmonic (2CD)

Stravinskys ground-breaking trilogy of Diaghilev commissions plus a scandalous Bartk ballet, treated to sumptuous late-70s Decca engineering and the Vienna Philharmonic sound. Christoph von Dohnnyi has long been considered one of the most versatile conductors of our time, making a name for himself in particular with the works of Romanticism and the Second Viennese School. From early in his career he established an excellent rapport with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and both in concert and on record drew from them playing of unusual transparency and clean attacks in music from Mendelssohn to Philip Glass. This generous Eloquence anthology of four complete Decca LPs brings together the Vienna Philharmonics only Stravinsky recordings for Decca and finds Dohnnyi on home turf, with ballets by his countryman Bartk and by Stravinsky that leap from the speakers thanks to both the conductors vivid characterisation and to first-class Decca analogue sound. Petrushka and The Miraculous Mandarin (complete with chorus) were taped in the Sofiensaal in 1977, with The Firebird following two years later. In the same 1979 sessions Dohnnyi and the VPO also recorded the pair of Portraits which the young Bartk wrote while in love with the violinist Stefi Geyer: the solo part here is played with luscious tone by the native-Viennese violinist Erich Binder, then leader of both the VPO and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra. The Diaghilev trilogy is completed with Lorin Maazels 1974 VPO recording of The Rite of Spring, done in the grand manner and with the conductors typical attention to detail and fine balancing of inner parts.