Volume 5 of Robert Craft's Stravinsky sequence continues the high musical standards and eccentric programme-building which characterized Vol. 4 (6/94). This is Stravinsky on a relatively small scale—slick, light-textured and free-flowing, purged of expressive exaggeration but by no means slavishly literal. Indeed, the opening number of the Suite No. 1 is surprisingly romantic in feeling. More predictably, subsequent items find the musicians trying to achieve the appropriate spikiness in what can seem a rather resonant performance space. The short orchestral pieces are interleaved with an unpredictable assortment of keyboard works, the piano tone generally a little shallow though perfectly acceptable. The performance of the Concerto for two pianos lacks the extrovert bravura of Ashkenazy and Gavrilov (Craft's note points to metrical improprieties in their treatment of the first movement's middle section) just as the Rag-time is less black than Rattle would make it—but Craft's restraint points up the unchanging aspects of Stravinsky's musical language.
The effective English-text version of Renard uses a variant of Stravinsky's own translation as heard in Sony Classical's 22-disc retrospective of his own later recordings for CBS (7/91). Not everyone will warm to the American accents, and the Cock's cries for help, ''Dear goat, dear cat'', are enunciated with unfortunate imprecision: if you can, you will have to sample the disc to hear what I mean. I have heard more buoyant accounts—if you don't mind adding another Pulcinella to the collection, Salonen's London Sinfonietta programme is more brilliantly played and sung—but on its own, more intimate, fairy-tale terms Craft's performance is an undoubted success. Craft comments that Renard was the first music he ever recorded (for Dial Records, New York in 1949). ''Hearing it, Stravinsky told me that my tempi were too slow, especially in the final section beginning 'Mister fox, dear foxy'. In this regard, and in others, the present performance makes amends.'' The forward placing of the soloists in Stravinsky's own recording is thankfully eschewed.
To sum up: MusicMasters's ongoing Stravinsky series is a must for the library shelves and, although individual collectors may find the arrangement of works unhelpful, there is at least the prospect of stumbling on some Stravinsky rarity you don't already know. The Ode will come as a delightful discovery to many. Its second movement (very convincingly done here) is drawn from music originally composed for the hunting scene in the Hollywood film of Jane Eyre (starring Orson Welles); its third achieves real profundity in a three-minute span. Recommended.'