An excellent, enterprising disc full of crisp performances that are sparkling without glare.

Hard on the heels of a valuable disc with the Ravel and Debussy trios which I reviewed only a short time ago, Andre Previn and RCA Victor now bring us this one which I enjoy no less. Predictably, one feels that Previn is the moving spirit behind these performances of three vivid French pieces for biggish chamber ensembles, and that it is especially his joie de vivre that informs Poulenc's sextet, where his charming solo at 213" in the first movement is just the first or many delights that help us to forget that its construction is not of the tightest. His colleagues also deserve every credit, and this crisply recorded account of the work is admirable, sparkling without glare.

This version of Milhaud's ballet score, La creation du monde, is a five-movement suite for piano plus string quartet that the composer made at his publisher's request. This is hard on its primitive elements, and indeed is no substitute for the original, but the performers offer all the vigour and sexiness that they can and it comes across well enough. After the uninhibited Poulenc and Milhaud, the programming of Saint-Saens makes one fear a let-down in musical temperature, but the composer of the Carnival of the Animals had five years before already penned a jolly, witty and busy score in his Septet of 1881, whose scoring includes a trumpet and double-bass. This is another sparkling performance and rounds out an excellent, enterprising disc.

-- Gramophone [11/1995]