- Artist:
- Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring
Release date: 16 January, 2026
CUT AT 45RPM FROM THE ORIGINAL DECCA STEREO MASTER TAPES
Solti once likened the city of Chicago and its illustrious orchestra to a “sleeping beauty” when he arrived as music director in the autumn of 1969. It was the name of another ballet – Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – which was to reveal just how incendiary the new relationship had become within five years in a recording which still hurls itself out of the loudspeakers half a century after it was made. The recording of Rite was made in a single session on 14th May 1974, in Medinah Temple, Chicago, Decca’s favoured venue at that time.
For this all-analogue mastering from the original, edited two-track stereo master, Rainer Maillard at Emil Berliner Studios has chosen to master the LP to play at 45rpm — the original LP was 33⅓ — in order to secure a better high frequency response and recapture the full “fury and clarity” of the original recording.
“Glamorous and powerful, this is obviously a version of Stravinsky's great score to be taken very seriously indeed... Solti’s version takes an honourable place in a highly competitive list.” — Gramophone, 1974
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)
Side A: Part I – L’adoration de la terre
Side B: Part II – Le sacrifice
