Ravel Piano

Ravel - Piano Works - Vlado Perlemuter (1973) {2CD Set Nimbus NI 7713/4 rel 1996}
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© 1973, 1996 Wyastone Estate / Nimbus Records | NI 7713/4
Classical / Impressionism / Early 20th Century / Piano

This set has been a favorite with critics since it was issued in 1979. Vlado Perlemuter studied Ravel's music with the composer. His approach is more colorful and dramatic than that of many other pianists. All the rigorous classical form Ravel used comes through, but so does a powerful musical personality. Just try, for example, the Toccata from Le Tombeau de Couperin, where Perlemuter builds up to a thrilling climax. The sound is more resonant than ideal, but this is still the best recording of Ravel's piano works ever made. Perlemuter's own Vox mono versions are poorly recorded; stick with the Nimbus edition.

Nelson Goerner has always dreamed of recording these two masterpieces of the concerto repertoire. With Kazuki Yamada, he has found the ideal partner to approach Ravel’s two piano concertos with the sensitivity and poetry for which he is universally renowned. The two works, composed at the same time and both performed for the first time in 1932, are nevertheless very different: premiered in Vienna, the Concerto for the Left Hand was commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in 1914; premiered in Paris, the Concerto in G is renowned for its verve and its famous pianistic interpolations. Ravel had composed the Pavane pour une infante défunte, a famous miniature of exquisite nostalgia, some 33 years earlier. The programme is completed by the Valses nobles et sentimentales; Marguerite Long, who gave the first performance of the Concerto in G, saw these eight linked pieces as a “stylistic panorama of the waltz”.

Jose Iturbi’s father built and tuned pianos as a hobby so the young José had access to an instrument from a very early age. He was one of four children and his sister Amparo (1899–1969) also had a career as a pianist. At the age of eleven Iturbi was studying piano at the Valencia Conservatory with Joaquín Malats, a friend of Albéniz. The Spanish composer heard Iturbi and gave him part of his new work Iberia to play. When Iturbi was fifteen, the people of his home-town collected money to send him to study at the Paris Conservatoire with Victor Staub. He obtained a premier prix in 1913 and after World War I received a professorship at the Geneva Conservatory. During the 1920s he led the life of a touring virtuoso, travelling across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, Russia and South America.

Martha Argerich’s Ravel G major was for so long a reference recording that it’s easy to forget how idiosyncratic it actually is. I wouldn’t actually blame anyone who found it too garish in its colouring, with its volatility giving diminishing returns and its rubato too predictably appassionato for a sensibility as dapper as Ravel’s. Such a person might well find exactly what they want in Steven Osborne’s account, which is masterful in its own way but essentially self-effacing.

The music of Ravel is especially close to Alexandre Tharaud’s heart. Now, in partnership with the Orchestre National de France and conductor Louis Langrée, he has recorded both the composer’s piano concertos, pairing them with Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain), Manuel de Falla’s sumptuous work for piano and orchestra. “Ravel’s Concerto in G major is fresh and Mozartian in its colours, while his Concerto for the Left Hand is haunted by dark shades and suppressed fears,” says Tharaud. Both concertos were premiered in 1932. “Characteristically for Ravel, they are simultaneously unique and alike.