Performing all three of Stravinsky’s early ballets in a single evening (I remember it well) was a tall order, even for the London Symphony Orchestra, and I do recall – despite two intervals – feeling some dissipation of energy (perhaps my own) as we danced our way towards the final sacrifice.

But make no mistake, there are wonders to behold here and you can sense and feel the magic descending in the stealthy opening measures of The Firebird – a Rattle speciality from his early days with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This LSO account, of course, represents decades of growing into the piece and is finely nuanced across the whole shimmering canvas – so many colours, so many half-shades. Plus the added frisson of in-the-moment liveness giving it wonderful atmosphere. I would cite ‘The supplications of the Firebird’ as typical of its fragrance and beauty: sensuous strings, arabesque-adorned woodwinds and jewelled celesta, solo oboe and solo violin exchanging the shyest glances. Plaudits, too, to first horn Timothy Jones, whose balmy solos have a wafting lontano effect over the whole piece.

The watchword here is certainly ‘seductive’. And as for those famed Rattle pianissimos, we are talking the very edge of audibility in the moments of ‘complete darkness’ before the sun rises on the jubilant peroration.

And then we are in another universe for Petrushka – one of earthy, folksy, thronging animation. If you like your Petrushka big-boned and drawn in poster colours then Rattle will delight and excite. Again, the playing is brilliant and virtuoso, with quite fantastic wind-playing. The ‘Russian Dance’ properly pulsates with a very ‘public’, very showy energy but then again the ‘private’ melancholic happenings backstage have a plaintive poignancy (limpid flute solos). The characterisation is spot on too, with the Ballerina’s Waltz tentative and awkward, and completely thrown off kilter by the clumsy Moor.

The final tableau is especially exhilarating, with episodes such as ‘The Peasant enters with a Bear’ writ large in E flat clarinet, tuba and rosiny string basses. Love too the boisterousness of the high-strutting ‘Coachmen and Grooms’. All of it brought to a halt by the hollow rattle of a dropped tambourine (Stravinsky’s instruction) as Petrushka’s strings are effectively cut.

And so to The Rite of Spring – for me the one real disappointment of the evening and of this set. It’s hard these days to rekindle the once-shocking newness of the piece, and to me its primitivism is too well-honed here, too studied. For sure it is weighty and brutal – massive in the ‘Spring Rounds’ with its roaring trombone glissandos. But the weightiness gives the impression of a uniformity and deliberation of tempo, even where that isn’t the case, and I know for a fact how utterly startling faster speeds can sound if one pushes the contrasts within the piece. Plus there is the impression, essential to its impact, of being on the very edge of possibility. The ‘Dance of the Earth’ is impressive here but without the illusion of hurtling out of control towards some ferocious endgame.

On the plus side, the eerily distant muted trumpets in the introduction to Part 2 are just perfect in capturing the primitive beauty and mystique of the piece and that innate sense of expectancy that every bar of it engenders. And yet the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ feels like an anticlimax, as if it is losing impetus, not gathering energy. Unsurprising at the end of a long and demanding evening – but even so, not what I should be feeling at the end of this of all scores.