Maurice Ravel

Ravel, Maurice - 10 Erato Recordings ( Almost Complete Works ) Director: Armin Jordan
Early 20th | 10CDs | FLAC | NO LOG | NO CUE | Easy CD-DA | 2,19 Gb | Complete Booklets(fr.eng.de) | Erato | RS

Behold Maurice Ravel's best known and some lesser known yet wonderfull works.
Nearly complete Stage, Piano, Orchestral & Chamber Works… Missing some of the shorter choral & vocal works.
Orchestral works by: Orchestre de le Suisse Romande directed by Armin Jordan with various soloists…

Will be updated regularily until complete.

The Capuçons, violinist Renaud and cellist Gautier, joined by pianist Frank Braley, enter into the gauzily shimmering, atmospheric world of Ravel’s Piano Trio in a sensitive performance that’s suggestively haunting in the first movement, effervescently bubbling in the second, profoundly reflective in the third, and imposingly declamatory in the fourth. The clean but somewhat low-level recorded sound underscores the spirit of the collaboration, never assigning undue prominence to any of the instruments. The ensemble may sound a bit distant, and perhaps for that reason a bit detached in the first three movements (as, for example, the Beaux Arts Trio, always vibrant, never did); but that sense of space hardly prevents their ferocious intensity from emerging temerariously in the finale.

The Poulenc Violin Sonata is still a relative rarity on record. I'm baffled by this, as it is one of Poulenc's most unique and musically rewarding works. This performance by Lin and Crossley is excellent; indeed they nearly match the superlative recording made by Kolja Blacher and Eric Le Sage for RCA. The brighter, more lively RCA recording adds a little extra sparkle and energy to the latter. However, in both instances, each violinist has the benefit of being joined by pianists who have made a specialty of Poulenc.

The violin and cello duo cannot be considered as a musical rarity; yet it is also far from one of the most popular instrumental combinations in Western classical music. It is a challenging ensemble for both those composing for it and those venturing in the performance of its repertoire. It is a duo which invites counterpoint: the deep nature of both instruments and their vocation is to melodic singing, to the sustained lines which translate the human being’s aspiration to vocality into instrumental music. In consequence, to undertake a composition for violin and cello duo is also to implicitly accept the challenge of polyphony, and to affirm one’s mastery of its most intricate secrets.

28th December 2012 marks the 75th Anniversary of the death of Maurice Ravel, the great French composer, best-known for his beautiful melodies, orchestral & instrumental textures and mesmeric compositional effects.