Ravel: Complete Works For Solo Piano (Chandos)
Malcolm Martineau: The Complete Songs Of Ravel (Signum)
★★★★☆/★★★★★
Both double-album titles left me feeling uncomfortable. Ravel is a miniaturist, a maker of exquisite small things that drop into your consciousness like olive oil into a bowl of rice. Each drop is an object entire. Pour them freely and the uniqueness dissolves. It speaks volumes for both of these projects that they manage to avoid that danger, most of the time anyway.
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet takes a chronological route, starting with a Serenade grotesque written in 1892 when Ravel was 17, and concluding with that monstrously grotesque caricature of morbid Vienna known as La Valse (and more often heard in its orchestral version).
From one track to the next, you wonder if anyone needs to hear every single one of the composer’s juvenilia, but before scepticism sets in Bavouzet dips us into the limpid world of Jeux d’eaux, and all is tie-pin-perfection. Le tombeau de Couperin is especially evocative, and a little-known Haydn tribute is just treasurable.
The album of chansons has been put together by the pianist Malcolm Martineau, with an array of British singers that will have Paris artist managers choking on their breakfast croissants. Nicky Spence and Simon Keenlyside are the standouts, with sopranos Lorna Anderson and Canadian Sarah Dufresne in close contention.
The proliferation of voices — too many to list — preserves us from uniformity, as does Martineau’s delicate variation of song colours. If I had to pick instant favourites, it would be Keenlyside’s Kaddish and the gloriously variegated set of Chansons populaires.
But, I’m rationing myself to no more than two songs a day for pure pleasure. At this rate, I might get through the entire Ravel year without having to waste another minute on the anniversary-stealing Pierre Boulez.
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