You have to hand it to New York’s Park Avenue Chamber Symphony and their intrepid leader David Bernard for sheer pluck and pure chutzpah, as they once again record repertoire warhorses that are more than sufficiently represented in the catalogue by world-class orchestras. As it happens, the three ubiquitous ballet suites featured on their latest release represent some of the organisation’s best work.

In Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, one cannot help but be impressed by the rhythmic discipline and the colourful allure in the brass and woodwinds. The introduction is dark and lugubrious yet texturally clear, giving no indication that the Firebird is about to make a sparking and incisive entrance! If the finale’s climax is underplayed, the small string section’s intonation is more focused and secure compared to their relatively shaky work throughout an earlier Stravinsky/Bartók release (A/16). On the other hand, they cannot really project the sweep and sustaining power needed to fully do justice to the lyrical sections of the ‘Pantomime’ and the opening part of the ‘Danse générale’ from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No 2.

Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite plays to the ensemble’s strengths and limitations. The threadbare string sonorities cast a convincingly fragile and vulnerable light on the opening slow section’s long note values, complemented by the fuller-throated flute and clarinets. The subsequent Allegro movement’s jagged attacks and releases don’t match the confident precision one expects, yet still manage to convey great style and character. This applies as well to ‘Solo Dance of the Bride’.

I can quibble about occasionally skewed balances (a prominent harp here, a backward violin pizzicato there), yet the sound generally reflects what one might hear from a choice concert-hall seat. On the whole, this disc amounts to the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony’s finest release to date.