Warner Music Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra - Debussy: La Mer; Dutilleux; Ravel, CD Classic

'With excellent performances of Debussy's La mer, Ravel's La valse, and Henri Dutilleux' violin concerto L'arbre des songes, Mariss Jansons demonstrates that he can also hold his own in French repertoire. This is actually an understatement, since in La mer the briny seawater splashes in your face and you feel the swelling of the waves, the ebb and flow, and the thrusting flow of the tide in a way that rarely happens in other recordings. In La valse it is immediately the suggestive, secret mysterious opening bars that under Jansons' direction imperceptibly and gradually lead, first carefully but shortly thereafter irresistibly, to a dancing waltz. The progression to the sinister dance of death in the last section becomes inevitable. Dmitry Sitkovetsky is the first-class soloist in Dutilleux' fantastic violin concerto-a modern masterpiece for which the strongest possible case is made.' Erik Voermans, ParoolRecorded live at the Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam on 7 and 8 June 2007.