This is a very beautiful performance indeed, with the mystery, the hushed quiet and above all the lyricism of the score all emphasized but not at the expense of vivid colour or rhythmic energy. Stravinsky's indebtedness—to Rimsky-Korsakov, to Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Glinka and Glazunov—is evident in this reading, as in many others, but Salonen also searches out an almost voluptuous, heady quality intensified by rubato, that makes obvious another influence, that of Scriabin. Indeed, the manuscript originally bore such un-Stravinskyan but highly Scriabinesque markings (suppressed before the full score was published) as passionato, con maligna gioia and even mistico. The Scriabin element is at its clearest in those passages which are the nearest the ballet approaches to a pas-de-deux or love duet for Prince Ivan and his Princess: the entry of the 13 captive Princesses, when he sees her among them and falls in love on the spot (the chamber-music texture here is ardent as well as exquisitely detailed), and the impulsively urgent dawn music as the Princesses return to their imprisonment and Ivan resolves to rescue them.
There is plentiful brilliance, too (the Firebird's first dance and the dance with the golden apples are both full of grace and sparkle), the sinuous orientalisms of the score (as in the Firebird's plea for freedom) are very well caught, and when vigorous impact is required neither Salonen's direction, the precision of his orchestra or the huge dynamic range of the recording are found wanting. Salonen is rather more likely to take tempos to extremes than Rattle on EMI, who is closer to allegretto in the dance with the golden apples, and just as pointed, despite the demurer pace, Rattle also finds no less hieratic solemnity in the Princesses' khorovod than Salonen, but at a much more dance-like speed. Rattle is better, too, at underlining the sheer magical strangeness of Stravinsky's invention, the ways in which he amply repaid his debts to Rimsky and the others with interest. Despite the marvels that Rattle has achieved with his Birmingham orchestra, though the Philharmonia have a touch more luxuriousness to their sound (their first horn is really superb) and I would be hard put to it to choose between Salonen's sumptuousness and Rattle's miraculous clarity of detail and greater dramatic punch. Salonen's Firebird is the last and most gorgeous orchestral spectacle of the Russian nineteenth century; Rattle's is also the first masterpiece of a twentieth-century composer.
I'd like both, ideally, but would probably plump for Rattle in the last resort. His couplings are brilliantly characterized and formidably well played (both versions, jazz-band and full orchestra, of the Scherzo a la russe, and the four pungent orchestral Studies), whereas Salonen offers an account of Jeu de cartes that is strong on crispness and impact but a bit short of grace, wit or exuberant humour (Abbado's account on DG, a fill-up to his first-rate reading of Pulcinella, gets closer to those qualities, while Conlon on Erato coupled with a very good account of the Symphony in Three Movements—gets closer still).'