Gone are the days when star directors Reiner, Karajan, Mehta or Solti lined up flamboyant versions ofThus spake Zarathustra, with Rudolf Kempe (EMI) and William Steinberg (DG) at the top. Now, the failures are legion: Boulez (DG), Dudamel (DG) and recently Santtu-Matias Rouvali (Signum). Riccardo Chailly (Decca), who dominates recent discography by far, is joined by this flamboyant 2018 concert by François-Xavier Roth. The French conductor perfectly understands the “currents” of this score (“Des joies et des passions”) and also delights in the gentle mixture of timbres, for example in “De la science”. All this is rare and precious and flows with naturalness, turning with agility at the slightest change of atmosphere. The coupling is rather strange, with Games by Debussy, scrutinized closely at the Barbican Hall. We find in these Games a little “dissected” a very cerebral Roth, while the approach is more subtle and elastic in his recording with Les Siècles (Harmonia Mundi). A somewhat useless duplication, alas.
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