French Ballet Music Of Wildly Varying Quality

A fallow time in acquiring new cd's, hence the hiatus in posting. But there is the monthly BBC Music mag offering to consider. This month's isn't one of the more inspiring. It presents French ballet music from Debussy, Satie and Roussel. The BBC Symphony Orchestra play Prelude a L'apres-midi d'un Faune ( conducted by David Robertson ) and Jeux ( conducted by Peter Eotvos ) By far the most imprseeive music on the disk and Prelude is of course of great lasting significance but I have posted about them before when a Debussy "best of" compilation came off the shelf. To be honest, the only Satie I know is as a piano miniaturist and Parade as played here by the BBCSO under David Porcelijn doesn't encourage me to investigate further any orchestral music. All a bit of a music hall pastiche. It does raise the question of how well ballet music survives when divorced from the dance. We all know masterpieces that have crossed over and almost transcend their balletic origins ( a case in point on this very disk ), while others appear empty as concert pieces. The latter is the case for me with Parade and also the Roussel Bacchus et Ariane Suite No 2, conducted here by Walter Weller with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. There is enough in the Roussel to make me want to see a preformance of the ballet but I wouldn't revisit the music alone very often.