If I could keep one Firebird, it would be Antal Doráti with the London Symphony, recorded for Mercury in 1959: the complete 1910 ballet, not the suite.
Doráti conducted for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in the 1930s, and it shows. The tempos are ones you could dance to, and nothing is lingered over for its own sake. Mercury’s engineers did the rest with a few microphones hung close to the orchestra. Every wind solo lands in your lap, and the bass drum in the Infernal Dance is a physical event. Sixty-odd years on, it still sounds better than most recordings made last year.
The alternatives are good: Stravinsky’s own, drier and more impatient; Boulez in Chicago, gleaming like a watch. Doráti’s is the one that sounds like a fairy tale.