Stravinsky’s youthful debts to Tchaikovsky ring out loud and clear in the Largo third movement of this spacious and uncharacteristically opulent Op. 1, extending to near-plagiarism 6'41'' into the finale – where Tchaikovsky’s Fifth looms especially large (the conclusive four-note rap of fate that ends the work suggests a similar genesis). Echoes of Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov are frequently audible, whereas the composer’s own personality surfaces in some imaginative scoring (for example, Firebird-style ill winds that waft in at 7'17'' into the first movement and the shimmering tremolandos that descend towards the close of the Largo). This new recording under Pletnev reports a trim, deft, delicately phrased performance, less unbuttoned than Stravinsky’s own, but frequently passionate (try the huge climax that builds from around 5'17'' into the Largo), significantly swifter and rather more incisive. Note, for example, the neatly chattering woodwinds near the beginning of the Scherzo.
The Scherzo a la russe is played in its symphonic guise and lacks the joie de vivre of its best rivals (Dorati’s vintage LSO recording still takes some beating) but the Firebird Suite, presented here in the 1945 ballet suite version, is remarkable for its control, transparency and quick-wristed instrumental pointing. Richard Taruskin, DG’s superb annotator, refers to this particular Suite as “really the whole ballet, orchestrally slimmed down and shorn of the ‘recitatives’”. Taruskin goes on to remind us that the composer himself lived to prefer the 1945 Suite to what he considered his “too long and patchy” original, and yet I would hate to lose the multicoloured “Sunrise” and “Magic carillon” that precede Kashchei’s Dance, neither of which is included in Stravinsky’s ‘slimmer’ option. Still, what we do have is cogently expressed, very well played (excepting the occasional spot of sour woodwind tuning) and superbly recorded. Pletnev keeps Kashchei on a fairly tight rein and punches the finale’s chiming chords to impressive effect.
The programme ends with a minute-long, ritualistic Canon on a Russian Popular Tune that appears in the ballet’s finale. Pletnev’s starkly dramatic performance suggests potential for fine versions of the Symphony in C and Symphony in Three Movements, great works that have little need of the one quality that is lacking in his Firebird – namely, magic.'