Stravinsky - Le Rossignol ~ Renard / Dessay, McLaughlin, Urmana, Naouri, Caley, Mikhailov, Conlon
At the dawn of the new century, as the heated musical debates of the last fade into irrelevance, Igor Stravinsky remains a towering presence--in perspective, his legacy appearing less a mere totem of musical modernism than a potent force of creative self-renewal. Indeed, there's been a recent bumper crop of significant Stravinsky interpretations, from Gergiev's gloriousFirebirdto the revealingtriptych recorded by Tilson Thomas--who in the summer of 1999 also led the San Francisco Symphony in a heralded festival reappraising the composer--as well as Sony'sreissueof Stravinsky's own Columbia recordings.Add to the mix this thoroughly delightful account of a pair of undeservedly lesser-known treasures. Based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale,Le Rossignolis usually encountered in its guise as an orchestral suite, but the original opera (1908-1914), presented here, is a work not to be missed. James Conlon simply allows the music to speak for itself and sympathetically enters into its stylistic collage, accenting the essential Stravinskian antitheses: nature and artifice, archaism and future shock. Because of a sort of telescopic brevity, you can hear the stylistic quantum leaps made by the composer, from the opera's lushly orchestrated, Rimsky-Korsakovesque opening scene to the bitonality and sonic experimentalism of the rest. Soprano Natalie Dessay marries acrobatic agility with the necessary air of longing and exotic beauty in the pivotal role. In the burlesque theater pieceRenard--Stravinsky's over-the-top riff on Russian folktales of cunning animals--Conlon is attuned to the angular, acid-tinged sonorities (featuring such wonderful instrumentation as the cimbalom) as well as the hilarious antics. In both works, the sense of theatrical narrative emerges to give a completely enchanting experience.--Thomas May