Ravel was very happy with his second Violin Sonata, written between 1923 and 1927, whose second movement adopts the Afro-American blues. This wonderful sonata is characterized throughout by the contrast between the consistently fairly dry piano part and the smooth, melodic violin.

The Sonata for Violin and Cello, written between 1920 and 1922, is dedicated to Debussy, who had died in 1918, and the work could be thought of as an elegy for the composer. There are references to Debussy’s final chamber works.

A complex and emotional work, the magnificent Piano Trio of 1914 contains four movements all full of exoticism and color.

The Joint Venture Percussion Duo is made up of Rachel Xi Zhang and Laurent Warnier, who met one another while students at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Both musicians shared an affinity for the music of Maurice Ravel, and regretted the fact that Ravel never wrote for percussion, so the duo took it upon themselves to arrange his music for their own instrument family. Inspired by Ravel’s shimmering orchestral scores and virtuosic piano writing, the Duo has arranged this entire CD which includes Ravel’s masterpieces Le Tombeau de Couperin, Ma mere l’Oye, 5 pieces enfantines, and finally the Pavane pour une infant defunte.

Anna Vinnitskaya celebrates dance, or rather the dances of composers from very different periods and styles: Ravel, Shostakovich and Widmann. ‘In all these works, you can feel in some way transported to the world of childhood. Because I believe the childhoods of each of these three composers are reflected there’, says the pianist. In his Valses nobles et sentimentales, Ravel paid tribute to Schubert. A few years later, he transcribed for solo piano his ballet score La Valse, in which ‘billowing clouds part from time to time, allowing us to glimpse waltzing couples’. Shostakovich’s Dances of the Dolls make me think of the Soviet cartoons of my childhood’, says Anna Vinnitskaya. ‘They also remind me of Mozart: they are as bright as diamonds, sincere and beautiful.’ The Zirkustänze (Circus Dances) composed by Jörg Widmann in 2012, a brilliant kaleidoscope of emotions and parodies, round off the programme.

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s legendary association with the Minnesota Orchestra yielded many classic recordings – and this selection of orchestral works by Ravel is one of them. Recorded in 1974 these Vox recordings have been newly remastered from the original tapes.

REVIEW:

A Polish conductor and an American orchestra play Ravel as if they were French. The Vox recordings from 1974 have been remastered from the original tapes and sound absolutely magnificent in their new freshness as far as the sound image and transparency are concerned.

Skrowaczewski begins with an elegant and finely differentiated, incredibly colorful version of the Valses Nobles et sentimentales. He gives the ballet Ma mère l’oye a wonderfully magical, sensual and suggestive character. Drama, crackling tension, subtle excitement and lyricism mingle in a dreamlike interpretation.

The two Daphnis et Chloé suites are no less outstanding and evocative. Here, too, the Minnesota Orchestra plays at the highest level of interpretation and technique, committed and, in the finale, ecstatic, following the highly inspired conductor. The St. Olaf Choir also deserves praise.

-- Pizzicato

French pianist Vincent Larderet inaugurates a definitive, four-volume series of the composer’s complete works for solo piano, signifying Vincent’s fulfilment of a decades-long devotion his compatriot. This first-ever Urtext compilation of Ravel’s complete works for solo piano is a landmark collection that embraces numerous world-premiere renditions. Many works, whilst familiar, are prepared and recorded from personal scores that were annotated by pianist and pedagogue Vlado Perlemuter during his private study and close collaboration with the composer between 1927 and 1929. These scores reveal invaluable insights to interpretation of such aspects as tempi, pedalling, phrasing and tonal colours. Through his tutelage under Perlemuter’s student Carlos Cebro, Vincent Larderet is a direct inheritor of Ravel’s ethos and interpretive style.

Volume 1 of Vincent’s Ravel survey includes original solo piano versions of the popular Valses nobles et sentimentales and Pavane pour une infante de´funte, alongside the five-movement suite Miroirs and Sonatine.

‘It is with certainty one of the most virtuoso pieces of all’, Stefan Vladar says about Maurice Ravel’s piano suite Gaspard de la nuit, constituting, so to speak, the main work on this Capriccio release. The pianist has worked the suite’s three movements diligently for more than two decades and also consistently studied Ravel’s other piano compositions, works that reflect completely different aspects of pianistic technical virtuosity and compositional aims. The journal Fono Forum has spoken of this Austrian pianist and conductor as “one of the most remarkable pianists of our age.”