A classic recording of a classic pairing of French song cycles. Composed some 60 years apart, Berlioz's Les Nuits d'�t� and Ravel's Sh�h�razade both visit romantic, mysterious and exotic locations, evoking a wealth of moods and sensations. Janet Baker, an irresistible storyteller, is accompanied on her journey by Sir John Barbirolli, conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra with sensitivity and imagination.

Maurice Ravel's music reflects the cultural and creative ferment of his times, as the heady sensuality of the Belle �poque made way for neo-classicism, the Jazz Age and modernism. Strikingly diverse in mood and scale, his works assert his distinctive identity, expressed through craftsmanship of the utmost finesse and beauty: deeply sensitive and balancing sincerity, irony and a touch of provocation. An essential collection of landmark performances, this 21-CD box of Ravel's complete works brings together major interpreters of the present day and preceding generations. There are even contributions from the composer himself, as conductor, pianist (on piano rolls) and artistic supervisor.

2019 release. Beatrice Rana, in the words of the New York Times, is a pianist who "has ferocious technique but is distinguished by her musical intelligence." Here she plays virtuosic, poetic works that evoke the creative ferment of Paris in the transitional early years of the 20th century: piano transcriptions of Stravinsky's iridescent ballet scores The Firebird and Petrushka, and Ravel's Miroirs and La Valse.

RAVEL: ALBORADO DEL GRACIOSO,

RAVEL: VALSES NOBLES, LA VALSE

French piano music is doing well this month, and this admirably recorded Rubinstein disc is the more welcome for including some lesser known pieces. Chabrier and Poulenc in particular don't get recorded these days nearly as often as they deserve. I notice that not even Poulenc's Mouvements perpituels are in the catalogue at the moment, which is odd, since not so long ago every pianist seemed to be playing them. The two Poulenc Intermezzi Rubinstein plays are welcome additions too. Chabrier on the other hand now makes a strong showing since all his piano works have been recorded for Vox by Rena Kyriakou, but none of these is available outside the format of a three-disc set; and that goes for Faurè's Nocturnes as well, to which only Evelyne Crochet has been giving any attention lately.

There is nothing to temper enthusiasm for this record (except surprise that no stereo version of it has been announced). Rubinstein is at his best and is a superb exponent of French music, which indeed he has been known to champion even to the extent of playing the Ravel Valses nobles et sentiment-ales as his first encore when the same piece failed to get much response in the main part of one of his public recitals. (I am assured that this did once happen; I should like to have been there.) The presentation of this RCA disc is couched in terms of his paying "homage to French music": not a bad idea and he could do more records like it. And what about another in which he could play some of the music of this century that has been written expressly for him? Pieces by Stravinsky, Falla, Poulenc and Szymanowski quickly come to mind. Ah well, just a thought.

-- Gramophone, [3/1965] Reviewing RCA 6603

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

Conducted by Philippe Jordan, this recording of Ravel's complete score for Daphnis et Chlo� followed performances of the ballet at Op�ra Bastille in Paris. The staging evoked the heady days of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes as it brought together Jordan, the choreographer Benjamin Millepied and the designer Daniel Buren. Jordan had never conducted a ballet production before: "When I work on a symphony, it's different," he said, "Here, the sense of phrasing, the physicality that dancers bring, make it something else. "Completing the CD is another work by Ravel that was originally conceived for Diaghilev's Ballets Russe, the intoxicating and haunting La Valse. Famously, Diaghilev rejected the score after it was first played to him in a two-piano reduction; the performers were Ravel himself and the legendary Marcelle Meyer.

"These are extremely fine recordings, topped only by Boulez himself on DG, performances not necessarily "better", but certainly sonically superior. Still, I retain a marginal preference for this ebullient and harrowing La Valse, and the super-precise and super-cool Cleveland interpretation of the Rapsodie is unique. Whether those qualities are what you want in this particular piece is very much a matter of personal choice; in his Berlin remake, Boulez put a little more meat on the music's bones. Boléro builds to a massively powerful climax...The sound suits the different orchestras: chamber-like in Cleveland, big and even boomy in New York, with a touch of glassiness to the strings in louder passages. At less than full price, this is an extremely good deal, even if you already have tons of Ravel in your collection." [4/20/2006]

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com Reviewing earlier release

RAVEL: ORCHESTRAL SONGS ROUS

A milestone of music making, this 5 CD boxed set collects Maurice Ravel's lush orchestral oeuvre in a collection of defining performances conducted by Pierre Boulez. A vivid testament to the ineffable incalculable role a conductor fills in any interpretation, 'Pierre Boulez Conducts Ravel' includes many of Ravel's best known compositions along with the valuable addition of less recorded and long out of print gems such as Jessye Norman's luminous Chansons Mad�casses with members of Ensemble Inter Contempora�n and the Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand, played thrillingly here by Phillipe Entremont with an inspired lights out Cleveland Orchestra. Boulez's prowess with the music of Ravel takes many forms, robust, muscular, capable of great tenderness, inquisitive, insouciant, and this collection of over 5 hours of music allows one to immerse completely within the rich mother lode of genius that was Maurice Ravel.

One wonders whether there will ever be a falling-off in the apparently insatiable desire of conductors and the record companies to give us yet more versions of these admittedly beautiful orchestral pieces by a French master; and one marvels too at the presumably similar appetite for this repertory on the part of the record-buying public, for whom Ravel now appears to be the classical composer par excellence in the way that Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov were two generations ago.

Still, there is room for a new issue of this quality. Michael Tilson Thomas brings a clear affection to the music but stops the right side of wearing his heart on his sleeve, so that phrases are caressed, not least in Ma mere l'oye, with a certain pudeur. In this work tempos are sometimes leisurely—the conversation between Beauty and the Beast is a minute slower than Abbado's more flowing performance for DG, but if this arguably brings a gain in expressive depth I am less attracted by a Rapsodie espagnole that feels self conscious and in which each movement lasts significantly longer than with Abbado. Still, here and elsewhere the LSO play most responsively; the Bolero is reliably exciting and the orchestral transcription of the Pike en forme de habanero (the one rarity here, with John Harle as the expressive saxophonist) is delightful.

-- Gramophone [5/1989]

RAVEL: BOLERO, ALBORADA DEL GR

This thoroughly recommendable issue is most welcome on CD, where its appreciable attributes can be even more clearly heard. Each singer has been carefully chosen for his or her task, and the contrast in timbres is, for the most part, illuminating. My single reservation concerns Heather Harper whom I now find a little cool for Sheherazade, in spite of the obvious distinction of her phrasing, but then this cycle isn't that well suited to Boulez's talents for stereoscopic precision and minute calculation. The other three singers have hardly been bettered as interpreters of their songs, and Boulez and his BBC and Parisian colleagues play throughout with delicacy combined with pinpoint accuracy. The recordings, made at different times in the 1970s and 1980s, are finely balanced. So I am as enthusiastic about the disc as I was back in 1984, if not more so.

-- Gramophone [4/1987]

RAVEL: LA VALSE, ETC DEBUSSY