If you're looking for the original 1911 version of Petroushka, this is NOT it! It's the revised 1947 version. Not sure what the mix-up was in printing up the cover, but they're wrong. Nothing wrong with the recording - just setting the record straight (pun intended).

Stravinsky as conducted by a man who had a pretty good grasp of the music. The music speaks for itself, and from my own (rather limited) experience, these performances, with their combination of clarity and urgency, are the best single place to be introduced to two of the undisputed masterworks of 20th Century music. On another note, the prior one star reviewer of this album may be pleased to find that iTunes' added support for gapless playback allows the parts of the Rite to flow together uninterrupted. The fault was with Apple, not the record company and it has fortunately been fixed!

These recordings of Stravisnky's greatest works with the composer conducting and the best of the best classical studio musicians alive at the time are among the greatest audio recordings of all time. Unfortunately, whoever edited these from the original master tapes INSERTED SILENCE between the scenes! Any freshman college music major knows that Petroushka is intended to be played as a continuous work - that's what gives it such an amazing effect! The same with Le Sacre Du Printemps. Listening to this is very uncomfortable, and unless you have an audio editing program and want to go in and remove the silence and make them continuous files, this is, unfortunately, a waste of money. How very sad that an engineer who didn't know what he/she was working on was allowed to do this - was no one at the record label in charge?