Grace, elegance and a certain detachment informed much of the work of Ansermet, Cluytens, Munch and Paul Paray. Paray's La valse is fast, tight and stylish, the collisions in the concluding bars clear and controlled (as opposed to riotous and overwhelming). It's a tribute, too, to the technical expertise of the Detroit orchestra and Mercury's simple microphone array. I was worried, though, by a serious lack of warmth and fantasy in the quieter, 'nocturnal' sections of the Rapsodie espagnole and the Alborada del gracioso—in the former, from Monteux (mid-price Decca) and particularly Reiner (mid-price RCA) there is far greater allure in the string playing, and the kind of tension that precedes an explosion (the final ''Feria''). The jester at the centre of Reiner's Alborada is more like a hungry lioness stalking her prey before the strike. Paray's jester is merely killing time.
Here, as in the Pavane, part of the problem is Paray's relative meanness with rubato. The best items are Le tombeau de Couperin (though the elegiac trio of the Minuet is perfunctorily despatched), and Ibert's Escales, where the festivities of Palermo and Valencia are far more invigorating and colourful than the recent Previn (Philips).
The accompanying notes claim that the engineers avoided ''electronic limiting'' and that control of dynamics was in the hands of the conductor. This could explain an unwillingness to 'let go' at the bigger climaxes; otherwise the sound on these 1962 tapings is bright, close and free. Le tombeau was recorded in 1959 and suffers from a degree more hiss and small tape 'thumps'.'