Galimir Ravel

Robert Trevino's first album together the Basque National Orchestra featuring orchestral works by the great French-Basque composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) received an excellent response. The program in this second volume is perhaps more 'French' in nature, but the Basque orchestra is giving dazzling performances of these works by their own national composer. While the first album was focused on some of Ravel's most popular orchestral works, this album includes some rarities, including Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) in it's complete ballet version, as well as one world premiere recording: Pierre Boulez's orchestration of Ravel's World War I era piano work, Frontispice.

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.

Between 1803 and 1968, the Grand Prix de Rome marked the zenith of composition studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In Maurice Ravel’s time the competition included an elimination round (a fugue and a choral piece) followed by a cantata in the form of an operatic scena. The entries were judged by a jury which generally favoured expertise and conformity more than originality and Ravel’s growing reputation as a member of the avant-garde was therefore hardly to his advantage, and may explain why he never won the coveted Premier Grand Prix, and the three-year stay at Rome’s Villa Medici that went with it.

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.

During his student days, Ravel often attended soirées at the homes of Parisian music patrons. In 1899, a patron commissioned him to a modest work for piano—it was only salon music and Ravel thought nothing of the posterity of the piece, Pavane pour une infante défunte. In 1902, Ricardo Viñes performed the work publicly to great acclaim. Ravel was surprised and disturbed by the acceptance of this piece. The “pavane” alluded to the solemn Renaissance dance form.