On the 24th January 1909 Sergei Diaghilev heard the first performance of a Scherzo Fantastique by Igor Stravinsky and set out to woo the young man into his circle of artists; a remarkable feat of talent-spotting even by Diaghilev’s standards. When the lax Liadov failed to deliver a score for Fokine’s planned Russian fairy tale ballet Diaghilev turned to Stravinsky and creative sparks flew. Snooty critics might diminish Stravinsky’s achievement as too redolent of his old teacher Rimsky-Korsakov by focussing on the similarity of narrative style and subject matter dictated by the commission but the younger man out-did his master, delivering one of the most approachable masterpieces of the twentieth century orchestral repertoire. 

Heard here is the 1910 complete ballet, so much more satisfying than the Suites Stravinsky later drew from it when his ascetic mindset seemed embarrassed by his extravagant early style and the big moments are shorn of their dramatic context. The early narrative passages of the complete ballet are full of extraordinary textures and sonorities and make perfect musical sense when the work is heard as a virtuosic concerto for orchestra with its exciting “ramp form” gradually brightening from the opening sequence with dark...