Recalling the 1913 Paris premiere of Le sacre du printemps, Carl Van Vechten wrote that “primitive emotions are both depicted and aroused by a dependence on barbarous rhythm,” while The Musical Times later deemed it “the most aggressive and taxing piece in the entire symphonic repertory.” On the light-wood stage of Munich’s Isarphilharmonie against a blue-lit slatted wall, Sir Simon Rattle revisits a score he famously recorded with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Where Pierre Boulez’s Cleveland benchmark prizes analytical geometry and Igor Markevitch’s Philharmonia account slashes with raw savagery, Rattle’s Bavarian Radio forces marry rhythmic precision to chamber-like transparency. From the solo bassoonist’s plaintive opening folk melody in its pinched high register (0:05) and clarinets raising their bells horizontally, the biting off-beat string ostinatos of Les Augures printaniers build inexorably. Rattle unleashes the brass and timpani onslaught of Danse de la terre before driving the shifting-meter convulsions of the Danse sacrale to an incandescent climax (33:30).