Symphony 2 / Metaboles Timbres / Espace CD (Finlandia Records, 1999)

stan bdb-.

This disc of three of Henri Dutilleux's most often recorded works suffers only in regard to the relative weakness of the orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Jukka-Pekka Saraste's conducting skills are excellent, and he gets right two important aspects of the Symphony No. 2--its brilliant imagistic spells and occasional homage to Stravinsky's French years. An earlier disc on Philips (438 008-2), now out of print, with Semyon Bychkov and the Orchestre de Paris, takes the same three works and gives them a more aggressive and spatially lush reading. Problems also arise on the Finlandia disc in Métaboles, where the Toronto group gets all the notes right but can't catch the work's elusive spirit. Find the Philips if you can. --Paul Cook