Ravel : La Valse (extrait). François Xavier Poizat

Maurice Ravel composed a number of works which have become classics of the repertoire both for solo piano and for orchestra. On the present disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colourized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study of orchestration treatises as well as scores, notably of works by Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss. Although his skills as an orchestrator are much admired today, his ability to coax new sounds out of the orchestra wasn't always appreciated in his own time, however – in 1907 the critic Pierre Lalo complained that ‘in Ravel’s orchestra, no instrument retains its natural sound…’

LA Phil 100 Years is the most comprehensive collection of the orchestra’s history to be assembled. This century-spanning volume tells the story of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s evolution in the language through which it expresses itself best: extraordinary music.

Rachmaninov's Third and Second Symphonies are distanced from each other not only by thirty years but also by the turning point in history that bisected the destiny of the Russian intelligentsia. Rachmaninov was full of creative energy and aspirations while writing the Second Symphony, in 1906-1907, even though he sought solitude in Dresden to feel the breath of his Motherland from a distance and to relate his own destiny to it. He was already a different person by the mid-1930s, struggling with the aftermath of his fate as an exile and summing up his life.