Ravel: Full Works For Solo Piano (Chandos)
Malcolm Martineau: The Full Songs Of Ravel (Signum)
★★★★☆/★★★★★
Each double-album titles left me feeling uncomfortable. Ravel is a miniaturist, a maker of beautiful small issues that drop into your consciousness like olive oil right into a bowl of rice. Every drop is an object total. Pour them freely and the distinctiveness dissolves. It speaks volumes for each of those tasks that they handle to keep away from that hazard, more often than not anyway.
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet takes a chronological route, beginning with a Serenade grotesque written in 1892 when Ravel was 17, and concluding with that monstrously grotesque caricature of morbid Vienna generally known as La Valse (and extra typically heard in its orchestral model).
From one observe to the following, you surprise if anybody wants to listen to each single one of many composer’s juvenilia, however earlier than scepticism units in Bavouzet dips us into the limpid world of Jeux d’eaux, and all is tie-pin-perfection. Le tombeau de Couperin is very evocative, and a little-known Haydn tribute is simply treasurable.
The album of chansons has been put collectively by the pianist Malcolm Martineau, with an array of British singers that can have Paris artist managers choking on their breakfast croissants. Nicky Spence and Simon Keenlyside are the standouts, with sopranos Lorna Anderson and Canadian Sarah Dufresne in shut rivalry.
The proliferation of voices — too many to checklist — preserves us from uniformity, as does Martineau’s delicate variation of music colors. If I needed to decide on the spot favourites, it will be Keenlyside’s Kaddish and the gloriously variegated set of Chansons populaires.
However, I’m rationing myself to not more than two songs a day for pure pleasure. At this fee, I’d get by way of your entire Ravel 12 months with out having to waste one other minute on the anniversary-stealing Pierre Boulez.
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Norman Lebrecht is likely one of the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s a daily presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Road Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning in opposition to human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.