• First, the Suite has so many characteristics of his later masterpieces:
  • it is neo-classical in its use of traditional forms and even traditional dance names for the movements;
  • it's short, only fourteen minutes in length;
  • it's in three movements;
  • the slow second movement bears the emotional weight of the work, surrounded by dance-like fast movements of great rhythmic vigor.
• Second, the Suite marks the beginning of his third and final period of his style; the period that was to be his most productive and successful.
• Finally, it's just so darn good, reminiscent of his best ballets.

The Suite starts out with the vigorous rhythms so typical of late Roussel; but it is the second movement that really rivets the attention. There's a lovely passage where the clarinet plays quietly over a string ostinato, introducing a stretch in which the music's gentleness masks a growing unease; an unease, fueled by subtle use of bitonality, that rises to anguish and pounding brass rhythms. The anguish doesn't go away; it merely grows quieter and quieter, finally dying away from exhaustion and resignation at the end of the movement.

After this somber, tragic Sarabande, the impish wind exchanges at the beginning of the Gigue open one of Roussel's most marvelous and light-footed finales. The melodies are memorable, the rhythms compelling, the orchestration colorful yet robust. In short, everything works to perfection.

With this suite, written for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Roussel abandoned impressionism, orientalism, modernism — styles which he had been cultivating — in order to enter the neo-classical world, grown so inviting to composers in France at that time. [David Ewen]

Roussel's neoclassicism [in the Suite] is direct; in comparison, Stravinsky's is argumentative.... Truly exciting music. [Arthur Cohn]

In this idiom [neoclassicism] he produced one of his finest works, the Suite in F major, an orchestral work written for and dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky. [Nicholas Slomnisky]

The jaunty, high spirits, the melodic angularity and mordant orchestration almost out-Prokofiev Prokofiev. [Lionel Salter]