Heinz Holliger - Koechlin: La Course de Printemps Op. 95, Le Buisson ardent Opp. 203 & 171 (2000)

The influence of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book on Koechlin was profound and La course deprintemps, which gestated over a very long period, was the finest of the tone poems he gathered together under the composite title Le livre de lajungle. Although the events depicted are certainly connected with the character and life of Mowgli, the music itself is above all evocative of the jungle itself, its exotically humid atmosphere and unpredictable bursts of violence and animal energy. The underlying sinister ambience is balanced by a Ravelian sensuality (there's even is a hint of Daphnis in the dawn evocation of the opening), while the mysteriously gentle but lustrous string monody which closes the work is other-worldly in its vision of a voluptuous moonlit spring night.
Koechlin's scoring is headily brilliant and one is engulfed in its rich panoply, so that for all the music's ecclecticism, it has a life and individuality of its own.
Le buisson ardent makes an ideal coupling. An evocation of rebirth – at times passionately intense in the strings, but with the ondes martenot later used to represent the ethereal voice of the reborn spirit. The work climaxes with a lusciously positive affirmation, but closes gently and rapturously. A superb introduction to Koechlin's exotic sound-world.