The third release in François-Xavier Roth’s survey of Ravel’s orchestral music with the period instruments of Les Siècles pairs two works from the years after the first world war. The “choreographic poem” La Valse, first performed in 1920, is often seen as a nightmarish response to the horrors of that war and the annihilation of the Viennese world that was epitomised by the waltz, but Ravel himself rejected such an interpretation, describing it instead as: “the dizziness and voluptuousness of the dance, pushed to its paroxysm.” Roth seems to lean towards the composer’s view; his performance is less nihilistic than some readings, it’s lighter, wonderfully athletic and full of brilliantly lit detail, though still mustering a real punch in the cataclysm of the final pages.
It also makes a real showcase for Les Siècles’ gorgeous early 20th-century French woodwind sound and plush strings. But in Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures, premiered just two years after La Valse, it’s the brass section that comes to the fore. Though the disc gives no details of where and when the recording was made, the sound is wonderfully vivid, and both in the opening Promenade and the final Great Gate of Kiev, the immediacy is startling.
Roth conducts a new edition of the score that removes some of the amendments that Serge Koussevitzky made when he first conducted it, and also goes back to the manuscript of Mussorgsky’s piano original to correct some details - Ravel had to work from the “cleaned-up” edition that Rimsky-Korsakov published after Mussorgsky’s death. The result is like viewing a restored old master; every detail glows, exactly as Ravel would have imagined it.
This week’s other pick
French music also provides the follow up to Vikingur Ólafsson’s hugely successful discs of Bach for Deutsche Grammophon. Debussy-Rameau mixes and matches pieces by the two composers: a selection of Rameau’s Pièces de Clavecin are interleaved with extracts from Debussy’s Images, Children’s Corner and two books of Préludes.
The virtues of Ólafsson’s Bach playing transfer easily to his performances of Rameau; his clarity, crisp rhythmic articulation and unselfconscious stylishness are all admirable, though it can seem a bit relentless at times. But the Debussy is much less convincing. There’s a whole dimension of keyboard colour and nuance missing from these prosaic performances; just a few moments listening to any of this music played by a great Debussy pianist, such as Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli or Krystian Zimerman, would be enough to show what’s missing here.
