Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (LP)

Solti once likened the city of Chicago and its illustrious orchestra to a “sleeping beauty” when he arrived as music director in the autumn of 1969. But 5 years later, it was another ballet – Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – which revealed how incendiary the new relationship had become and in a recording which still propels itself out of the loudspeakers half a century after it was made.

This recording of Rite was made in a single session on 14th May 1974, in Medinah Temple Chicago, Decca’s balance engineers favoured venue. “Glamorous and powerful” wrote Gramophone’s Jeremy Noble in 1974, “this is obviously a version of Stravinsky’s great score to be taken very seriously indeed. The opening bassoon solo is beautifully phrased, with Solti giving it plenty of time to unfold, and the recording allows plenty of detail to emerge as the various woodwind instruments stir and tremble into life in that extraordinary dawn chorus.

Solti is, as one might expect, particularly good in the fiercer sections of the score: in the ‘Glorification of the Chosen One’, for example, he hits just that note of savage exultation … and his account of the final "Danse sacrale" is brought off with superb power and panache. Solti’s version takes an honourable place in a highly competitive list” Gramophone, 1974 For this all-analogue mastering from the original, edited two-track stereo master, Rainer Maillard at Emil Berliner Studios has chosen to master the LPs to play at 45rpm – the original LP was 33⅓ – in order to secure a better high frequency response and recapture the full “fury and clarity” of the original recording.