Just the first few notes of the introduction to Ravel’s opera always cast their spell. When Colette, who had written the libretto without knowing who would eventually compose the music, heard the first full play-through, she was overcome: “I had not foreseen that a wave of orchestrated sound, starred with nightingales and fireflies would raise my modest work up to such heights.” In many ways L’enfant et les sortilèges is an ideal opera for recording. The imagination can create stage pictures of the fire, the shepherds, the trees and the animals, and a balance between orchestra and voice is possible that will do justice to Ravel’s orchestral effects – what Ned Rorem once called “lusciously carefree, with its daft blues and dizzy foxtrots”. These two new additions to the catalogue will not displace three classic recordings that have held the field for decades – those conducted by Ernest Bour (Testament, 2/95), Ernest Ansermet (Decca, 6/93) and Lorin Maazel (DG, 3/89).

However, both have strong casts and are very well recorded. Simon Rattle has long held the work in affection: I remember hearing him conduct a concert performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall back in 1982, and later the Glyndebourne production, designed by Maurice Sendak. In the new recording his approach is somewhat more symphonic, especially compared with the Naxos CD, taken from a live performance in Nashville, which has a slightly earthier feel to it. The line-up of soloists in Berlin could hardly be starrier but the American group does not lose face in comparison. The roles are shared out differently. Ravel stipulated that the same singer ought to sing the Fire, the Princess and the Nightingale – as Annick Massis does for Rattle, whereas in Nashville these are shared between Cassandre Prévost and Agathe Martel. As the child, Magdalena Kozená manages to seem suitably boyish and wilful, Julie Boulianne has a more mature sound. The fill-up items are well chosen: Ma Mère l’Oye, lusciously played by the Berlin Philharmonic for Rattle, Shéhérazade done with feeling by Boulianne for Alastair Willis and the Nashville Symphony.