It's true, we admit: no-one is really waiting for a new recording of Stravinsky's Firebird – even of the 1945 Suite, which is more rarely performed than the rather hackneyed one of 1919. But what's original about this album from the Orchestre National d’Ile-de-France is rather the rare work by Milhaud: La Bien-Aimée, a ballet from 1928 which had the considerable misfortune of being first performed at the same concert as Ravel's Boléro – which, of course, eclipsed everyone and everything else. But this Bien-Aimée is not without its charms; it is in fact a series of orchestrations of Liszt and Schubert, with one piece for pianola! Yes, the pianola, the mechanical piano which doesn't play quite as "automatically" as all that, given that the human musician decides the tempo, the dynamics and the balances themselves. The difficulty of course lies in perfectly synchronising the pianola and the orchestra: but here, it is pulled off perfectly. Milhaud's orchestrations of this music by Liszt and Schubert are a lot of fun, and Milhaud enjoys a few flashes of genius, and on occasion an unlikely orchestral hodgepodge with neither head nor tail but which, oddly, hits the mark, if in a somewhat slapstick manner. One to discover! © SM/Qobuz