[In] Le Nouvel Âge…The score has three movements: “Ouverture,” “Adagio,” and “Hymne.” After a brief, quiet opening of strings in octaves, the orchestra erupts with a hymn to the Machine Age…with works like Honegger’s Pacific 231, Antheil's Ballet Mécanique, Prokofieff’s Le pas d’acier, and Mosolov’s Iron Foundry. The mechanistic riffs—thuds from the bass drum, the snares’ taradiddles, the blaring brass—of the Sinfonietta and the Cinéma-Ouverture achieve their greatest expressive power in a Markevitch score. For me, the Adagio counts as the most extraordinary movement, achieving an intense, hypnotic near-glacial movement. The “Hymne” begins as another paean to the Jazz Age but slows to the music of the Adagio. The trumpets and percussion at high blast burst in again, and after a passage of many competing rhythms, the piece ends on a blaring “jazz” seventh.

This entry stands among the strongest of Naxos’s seven-volume Markevitch series. As always, Lyndon-Gee and the Arnhemers play with dedication and spirit. © 2012 Classical Net Read complete review