It makes good sense for Erato to repackage these Dutilleux recordings at mid price, especially for collectors who held back on economic grounds from buying the earlier two-disc set of chamber works (5/95) which contained a mere 88 minutes of music. In this new format, we are offered a comprehensive retrospective of Dutilleux’s work over more than 40 years, and the opportunity to admire anew a distinctive musical voice which, while it owes more to Honegger or Roussel than to Messiaen or Boulez, has proved to have abundant staying power, as well as the capacity to evolve within its own well-defined borders. The Piano Sonata (1947) and Mystere de l’instant (1989) are recognizably the work of the same hand, but the later composition is very far from a self-satisfied reworking of the premises of the earlier one.
As far as the large-scale orchestral works are concerned, these are not the best recordings available. Yan Pascal Tortelier and the BBC Philharmonic are preferable to Barenboim and his French team in the two symphonies, while Semyon Bychkov and the Orchestre de Paris are currently best buys in both Metaboles and Timbres, espace, mouvement, which they perform with the composer’s preferred revisions. Nevertheless, with only Ainsi la nuit... among the remaining works widely available on disc, and given the virtues of those works, and of these recordings, this set is an attractive proposition.'