Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

There are moments, brief nuggets of aural pleasure, which you know you have listened to a modern and defining masterpiece and which leads you into a world that, despite its apparent space in history, feels new and exciting; that you have listened to a piece of music in which the sensational is but a by-word for the sound of your jaw dropping to floor with the appreciation of a child wallowing in the glow of its first sunny day.

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a piece of movement so tantalisingly beautiful is poetry in its purest sense, a magical sprite of musical endeavour which captures the ethereal in its grasp and which perhaps cannot be bettered by many who try to combine orchestral and ballet together; yet somewhere in the hidden recesses of the mind, to match that intense pleasure and deep burgeoning tones of satisfaction is to be expected at least and in David Patrick Octet’s reading with the Jazz like quality, the freedom to play and blossom at conductor inspired will is complemented with astounding sincerity.

To equal a classic with its own equivalent is nothing short of a tremendous feat and in the David Patrick produced album, the flowing movement of time that separates Igor Stravinsky’s first public performance of the beguiling piece feels as though it has been written with this reading in mind, such is the harmonisation between the two pieces, and despite the wonderful foray into the world of Jazz rather than the classical original, that each segment feels innovative and salubrious.

With Sam Coombes, Brian Molley and Calum Robertson all providing the suberb woodwind section, Tom MacNiven and John Kenny on brass, Andrew Robb and Ole Seimetz on rhythm and piano and orchestration being supplied by the maestro behind the re-imagining of Stravinsky’s work, David Patrick, moments such as Spring Fortune-Telling, Game of Abduction, Procession of the Sage, Mystical Games of the Young Maidens and the climatic Great Sacred Dance all resonate with charm, the huge sense of occasion and more energy than an album should be capable of holding between its covers.

The Rite of Spring has always been a incredible piece of music, thanks to the David Patrick Octet, it breathes again, albeit in a way that might never have been imagined, but nonetheless one filled with meaning and natural splendour.

Ian D. Hall