The Rite of Spring should continue to shock, but the elements of surprise in this live recording come from unexpected sources. Despite the dramatic authority exerted by Gustavo Dudamel over his charges in concert and on some of their DG recordings (in particular Beethoven’s Seventh, 11/06, and the “Fiesta” album, 8/08), this Rite isn’t all that loud, or savage. The crescendo at the end of Part 1 could certainly go further, though tension is already sapped by Dudamel’s curiously stately tempi for “Spring Rounds”. A speed of 52 instead of the prescribed 80 beats a minute creates a massive but also crass and debilitating effect in the central Pesante section.

You might expect Dudamel, as a prodigious master of the calculated effect, to be more at home in Part 2, but the heavy vibrato of the introduction is too acculturated – just as Part 1’s bassoon solo had been insouciantly flicked off – and not perfectly tuned or disciplined. Then, bizarrely again, he takes the “Ritual action” at 66 instead of the score’s 52. That’s almost as quick as Stravinsky’s Columbia SO recording (12/88), but where the composer maintains the tempo to breathtaking, juddering effect, Dudamel pulls it around (something of a cardinal sin in the Rite, and in Stravinsky in general).

Taken out of context, the “Danse sacrale” finally delivers the controlled mayhem you might expect from this team but this Rite is viewed through the prism of the French composers who learnt from it. The wonderfully apt coupling of La noche de los Mayas should, in theory, show Mexican folk culture through the prism of Stravinsky but even the many percussion cadenzas of the finale offer a more picture-postcard scene than the rambunctious vigour of the Mexico City PO and Fernando Lozano (once on EMI) and the carefully colour-calibrated LAPO with Salonen (Sony, 4/99). The distant DG recording may be a factor here: I don’t know how large is the home of the SBYO, the Centre for Social Action through Music, but audience and acoustic have the amplitude of a sweaty Royal Albert Hall.