Interesting pairing, to put Stravinsky’s two birds together like this; don’t know if it’s been done before. This is the complete Firebird ballet of 1910, which runs 47 minutes. The performance is excellent, with plenty of snap and fire. King Kachtchei’s big dance really raises the rafters. I never could get into Stravinsky’s 1917 Song of the Nightingale – always sounded to me like outtakes from the Firebird.
The big technical problem here is that all three sound options on this disc are at extremely low levels. I’ve never run into much level difference on SACDs as many CDs are guilty of, but this one may have you thinking you blew something in your system when you start the first track playing. I had to crank up my Sunfire AV preamp all the way to 100%, which I have never had to previously, and it brought up hiss and noise to interfere with the music. Even on my iMac I had to run volume up all the way to get normal levels, which I also never had to do previously. Unless your system has a super-low noise floor you might want to avoid this SACD.
– John Sunier
