Prepare to be delighted by the music and the playing on this disc. Kent Nagano and the Lyon Opera Orchestra know exactly what they are doing with Le boeuf sur le toit, and Milhaud's ballet, written for Cocteau in 1919 and set in an American bar during the Prohibition, comes up wonderfully fresh. Some performances lay its wit on too thick, but not this one: instead there is a Gallic sense of proportion, yet with no consequent weakening of the more uproarious moments—indeed, they stand out all the more effectively. In fact, the orchestral playing is subtle, elegant and often beautiful, as in the quiet B flat minor section just after the six-minute mark, in which a trombone accompanies musically instead of (as so often) merely comically and loudly, and which ends with a dolcissimo bass drum. Listen also to the fine woodwind solos at 16'30''.
La creation du monde (1923) was among the first twentieth-century works by a western composer to take its inspiration from African folklore, and it still comes up strongly with its powerful use of jazz. However, this is not the sophisticated white kind but the raw black New Orleans idiom that Milhaud had recently heard on a visit to the USA.
His own words were, ''I used the jazz style unreservedly, blending it with a classical approach''. The ballet culminates in a mating dance, and the score is darkly coloured and profoundly sensuous. Nagano and his orchestra bring out all its character, taking the jazz fugue in scene 1 (track 3) more urgently than usual and to excellent effect.
As Jean Roy's booklet essay reminds us, the Harp Concerto, written in the USA in 1953 for Nicanor Zabaleta, is one of no less than 25 concertos that this prolific composer produced between 1927 and 1964. Here, too, there's some jazz influence, if inevitably of a gentler kind, but although the writing for the soloist is energetic the music is somewhat anonymous. Incidentally, track 8 contains two movements (the scherzo-like second starts at 6'55'') although it is labelled just as the first. However, as the booklet says, the slow movement goes deeper and in the finale ''as always with Darius Milhaud, light and gaiety come out on top''. This is another attractive disc from his centenary year.'