Album: Paavo Jarvi, Orchestre de Paris Bizet: Symphony In C; Jeux d'Enfants; Roma (Virgin Classics)

Written when the composer was just 17, the Symphony in C was regarded so dismissively by Bizet himself as a juvenile trifle that he neither published it nor had it played during his lifetime.

Only posthumously was it hailed as a youthful masterpiece, its essential buoyancy and joie de vivre delightfully expressed in this new interpretation by Paavo Järvi. The youthful brio is extended for the accompanying small suite of orchestrations of Bizet's piano pieces for children, Jeux d'Enfants, the programme concluding with the later Roma Symphony in C, a more reflective work. The two symphonies together offer an interesting arc of Bizet's development.

DOWNLOAD THIS Symphony in C; 'Roma' Symphony in C