A new CD released by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) through the medium of PentaTone Music and Naxos, features these three composers with some of their most popular works. Conducted by the late Hans Vonk, the orchestra brings out the very best in this music and lets both the romantic and the darker moments of the featured works spill into the imagination.

The CD opens with Claude Debussy's famous La Mer, a composition that seizes on the various moods of the sea in three movements. There are quiet, even serene moments, yet also moments when the composer brings alive the rising and falling of the waves, and finally, even the crashing of the sea against the shore in a storm. All these images are contained within one of the most descriptive tone poems ever created about the sea. Recorded live at its home, the Powell Symphony Hall, in March of 2001, the SLSO responds beautifully to maestro Vonk's personal interpretation of La Mer. It is one that seduces and enchants with its lush sound.

Tracks four and five on this CD feature the SLSO playing Maurice Ravel's Valse nobles et sentimentals, and his La Valse. The latter, although started around 1906, before Vales nobles, was not finished until 1920. It thereby takes on a very different nature from its original intent. Ravel had a fondness for the Viennese waltz, and especially Johann Strauss. But he also loved the dance music created by Franz Schubert. It is to him he looked for his inspiration for the eight dances that flow into each other in Valses nobles et sentimentales. As for La Valse, Johann Strauss is no longer the pure inspiration for this work because WWI changed how Ravel perceived Vienna.

Yet, listening to the two works, one is tempted to visualize the frivolity of old Vienna in its supposedly happier days; at the same time, one comes to accept that Ravel is also portraying the downfall of the Hapsburg dynasty because the music at times is frenzied and rushing, even angry. Recorded in 2000 (Valses nobles) and 1999 (La Valse), these performances show that the SLSO and its director are thoroughly imbued by the European sensibility of these works.

The final track features Albert Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane, a lush ballet score about the Greek legend of Ariadne of Crete. The composer captures with sensitivity as well as with gusto this tale in which the daughter of King Minos ends up on Naxos, where she is seduced by Bacchus (or the God Dionysus). It was recorded by the SLSO in 2000 with the same deft touch that maestro Vonk had imparted on the orchestra during his tenure there. He had to retire from the position because of illness.

The CD's sound is fairly well balanced, despite the works having been recorded at very different periods. As such I found it exceedingly rewarding to listen to.

Azulão featuring Isabel Bayrakdarian has been moved to Archives