Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Orchestral Works and Operas
Orchestre National de Lyon/Leonard Slatkin
rec. 2011-2015, Auditorium de Lyon, Lyon, France
No texts of the song cycles and the operas
Naxos 8.508022 [8 CDs: 512]

This is the most comprehensive Ravel box around at the moment. It includes all the orchestral works, the concertos, the song cycles, the two operas and some rarities. Most of these discs have been reviewed here, so it is my task, as I see it, to give an overview of the set and links to the reviews. The discs come in attractive cardboard sleeves in a handsome box. The booklet discusses all the works, but there are no texts of the two song cycles and the two operas, which is really inconvenient. There only is the French text and an English translation for the version of Antar, a mere curiosity. The libretto of L’heure espagnole in French is available on-line.

Leonard Slatkin, probably best known for his excellent recordings of American music, has also long been a champion of French repertoire. In the five years when he was conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon, he recorded not only this Ravel series but works by Berlioz, Saint-Saëns and others. He always secures precise and idiomatic playing, but sometimes, particularly on the first two discs, his interpretations seems to me to lack sparkle.

On the first disc, Alborada del gracioso, orchestrated from the piano suite Miroirs, and the Rapsodie espagnole struck me as neat and adequate. The Pavane and the Pièce en forme de habanera were both slightly on the slow side, and the latter quite sultry. The early Shéhérazade overture (not the song cycle) is not characteristic but well done nonetheless. The Menuet antique is piquant and precise, and not lacking in magic. The Boléro sounds merely dutiful. For more, see review ~ review ~ review.

The second disc begins with Valses nobles et sentimentales. Something seems wrong with the balance: the soundwas crude and lumpy at the start. This improves, and there follows a decent performance. Remarkably, we then have Marius Constant’s orchestration of the piano cycle Gaspard de la nuit, surprisingly successful and well worth hearing. (Christoph Eschenbach and the Orchestre de Paris recorded it for Ondine, on an otherwise unremarkable disc.) Next comes the orchestral version of Le Tombeau de Couperin, in which the Forlane is particularly successful, and a very atmospheric and beautifully shaped performance of La Valse. There is a fuller review here.

The third disc is given to transcriptions. Those of Chabrier and Debussy are well known and frequently performed. Apart from a splashy opening to the former, these are well done. Ravel arranged Schumann’s Carnaval, but the complete score went to Romola Nijinsky and seems to have disappeared. What we have are four pieces. Hearing them is a curious experience, since – while the content is obviously Schumann – the orchestration is nothing like his; light and transparent, it makes me think of Weber or even Berlioz.

Ravel’s version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition is the best known of these transcriptions, and Slatkin has recorded it several times, in different versions. I should note that he puts back the Promenade which Ravel cut, in his own orchestration, and he makes some other adjustments. I reviewed this ten years ago, here.

The fourth disc brings us Daphnis et Chloé, in my view Ravel’s finest work. This is a really lovely performance. The woodwind interchanges are sensitively realised, the intricate and elaborate writing for the strings carried out with gossamer lightness, and the brass kept under careful control. The phrasing and rhythm are immaculate. The Spirito chorus are well balanced and in tune. I liked this performance very much and would put it above some other recent recordings I have heard, such as Roth’s and Wilson’s, though not above classic versions of the past such as those by Monteux, Munch or Dutoit. On the same disc, we have Une barque sur l’Ocëan, Ravel’s other orchestration from Miroirs, here sounding rather like a study for Daphnis et Chloé. For more, see review ~ review.

The fifth disc is given to a curiosity. In 1910, Ravel agreed to rework Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic poem Antar to provide incidental music to a new play. He cut, rearranged and rescored passages from Rimsky-Korsakov’s score, added a number from his opera-ballet Mlada, and wrote a few short interludes of his own. All this has been painstakingly reassembled for this first recording, with a new linking narration by Amin Maalouf, best known as Kaija Saariaho’s librettist. André Dussollier delivers it very adequately, sometimes in between and sometimes over the musical passages. I have to say that I could have done without the spoken text entirely to concentrate on the music, and that Ravel’s contributions, though charming, are very brief and minor. (If you want to hear Antar, listen to Rimsky-Korsakov’s original in its best version, that of 1897, as recorded by Svetlanov or Bakels.)

The coupling, appropriately enough, is Ravel’s Shéhérazade song cycle, another example of Orientalism, in the enthusiastic and admiring sense which the term had at the time, rather than the negative one it has acquired since. I enjoyed Isabelle Druet’s singing, and Slatkin is a master of the fantastic refinement and delicacy of the orchestral part.

The sixth disc contains the concertante works – the two concertos and Tzigane. I had a shock at the opening of the Piano Concerto: the trumpet solo was horribly out of tune. This should have been remade. The pianist, François Dumont, is excellent in the fast passages, with a really good non-legato touch, but rather mannered in the slower, lyrical ones. So, the build up to the climax in the first movement went really well, as did the cadenza near the end, but some of the earlier writing was played too freely for my taste. The slow movement was decently done but lacked magic. The finale, on the other hand, which can sound trivial, was really excellent, with the piano dancing away.

The same qualities were in evidence in the left-hand concerto, but the opening contrabassoon solo was so quiet it was almost inaudible. The first piano entry was good but the lyrical interlude was too slow, so that when the figuration started it sounded laboured. The Allegro middle section, which starts playful and then becomes sinister with the bassoon solo – an excellent player here – went very well, with the build up to, and let down after, the climax as good as I have heard it. The big cadenza, a horribly difficult passage, was also well done. For a review, see here.

Between these two was Tzigane, the epitome of gypsy fiddling in Western art music. This depends entirely on the ability of the violinist to play it. Jennifer Gilbert did the honours here, and she certainly delivered the goods.

The last two discs are devoted mainly to the two one-act operas. These are both ensemble pieces, L’heure espagnole an earthy farce and L’enfant et les sortilèges a modern fairy-tale. In L’heure espagnole Isabelle Drouet, whom we heard earlier in Shéhérazade,is equally delightful as the sparky and mischievous Concepción, who wants to make the best possible use of her husband’s absence on a Thursday morning. Frédéric Antoun is ardent and amusing as the loquacious but ineffective student poet, a kind of parody of an Italian tenor. Nicolas Courjal is fruity and imposing as the banker Don Iñigo Gomez. Luca Lombardo is satisfactory as Torquemada the clockmaker, as is Marc Barrard as Ramiro the muleteer who carries clocks to and fro with a will and eventually gets his reward. Slatkin holds the whole together by sparkling orchestral playing and a firm sense of continuity.

Also on this disc are the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée songs, which  Paul Morand wrote using the characters from Cervantes. These were Ravel’s last work, when the neurological illness which eventually killed him was already affecting his ability to work, though this is not evident in the songs themselves. They are sung by François Le Roux, who was sadly past his prime. For a review, see here.

In L’enfant et les sortilèges, the Child fed up with his tasks resolves to be naughty. He damages the things in his surroundings and hurts the animals. Later, he goes out into the garden and continues his campaign of destruction. The various objects and animals take symbolic revenge. This goes on until the Child bandages the paw of a hurt squirrel. The animals take him back to the house, taking up his cry of ‘Maman’. With that on his lips, the opera ends. I liked this more than my colleague Leslie Wright (review), who thought Slatkin’s singers were too operatic. I agree with him about the excellence of soprano Annick Massis in three roles. The coupling, Ma Mère l’Oye, is not the usual suite but the complete ballet. The playing is quite magical both in this and the opera. I should add that the contrabassoon, the harp and other important instruments are heard clearly.

This is a generally good set of performances,and a comprehensive overview of Ravel’s music. That is what one wants from a set like this. Enthusiasts will have their own favourite performances, such as Martinon, Ozawa or Dutoi in the main orchestral works, or the pianist of their choice in the concertos. There also are classic recordings of the operas, such as those by Maazel.

I have a reservation about the programme. The reworking of Antar is only of specialist interest. Also, Slatkin chose to include an orchestration of a piano work, Gaspard de la nuit, not done not by Ravel. I would rather the space went to other orchestrations by other hands. Various people have orchestrated the other pieces in Miroirs, notably Grainger arranged La Vallée des cloches. Others have orchestrated the two pieces in Le Tombeau du Couperin which Ravel did not score. There is also Yan Pascal Tortelier’s orchestration of the Piano Trio, which in this form becomes a symphony.

The other reservation is the usual one about texts. The only text included is that of Antar, which the listener may be least interested in. The texts of the two song cycles can fairly easily be found on-line, with translations. That, however, is not true of the operas, nor is there a convenient handbook with them. Naxos provide a link to the text of L’heure espagnole in French, but none for L’enfant et les sortilèges, and neither link is easy to find. In fact, the easiest way of getting printed libretti with translations is to buy recordings which come with them, which rather defeats the point of a set like this. But for that, this would be a convenient set.

Stephen Barber

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Contents
Disc 1
Alborada del gracioso
Pavane pour une infante défunte
Rapsodie espagnole
Pièce en forme de habanera (arr. Hoërée)
Shéhérazade, Ouverture de féerie
Menuet antique
Boléro
Jennifer Gilbert (violin)

Disc 2
Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911)
Gaspard de la nuit (1908, orch. Marius Constant, 1990)
Le tombeau de Couperin (1914, orchestral version, 1917)
La valse (1920)

Disc 3: Transcriptions
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894): Menuet pompeux
Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Sarabande et Danse
Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Carnaval Op.9
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881): Pictures at an exhibition

Disc 4
Daphnis et Chloé – Complete Ballet (1909-1912)
Une barque sur l’océan (1904-1905, orch. 1906)

Disc 5
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich, arr. Ravel: Antar (1910, arr. 2014)
Shéhérazade, a song cycle (1903)
André Dussollier (narrator, in Antar), Isabelle Drouet (mezzo-soprano, in Shéhérazade)

Disc 6
Piano Concerto in G major (1929-1931)
Tzigane, for violin and orchestra (1924)
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1929-1930)
François Dumont (piano), Jennifer Gilbert (violin)

Disc 7
L’Heure espagnole – Opera in One Act (1911)
Isabelle Druet (mezzo-soprano): Concepción; Marc Barrard (baritone): Ramiro; Frédéric Antoun (tenor): Gonzalve; Nicolas Courjal (bass): Don Iñigo Gómez; Luca Lombardo (tenor): Torquemada
Don Quichotte à Dulcinée – Three Songs (1934)
François Le Roux (baritone): Don Quichotte

Disc 8
L’Enfant et les sortilèges – Fantaisie lyrique (libretto by Colette) (1925)
Hélène Hébrard (soprano): L’Enfant (The Child); Delphine Galou (alto): Maman (Mother), la Libellule (the Dragonfly), la Tasse chinoise (the Chinese Cup); Julie Pasturaud (mezzo): la Bergère (the Louis XV Chair), la Chatte (the White Cat), l’Ecureuil (the Squirrel), un Pâtre (a Herdsman); Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (tenor): la Théière (the Teapot), le Petit Vieillard (Arithmetic Man), la Rainette (the Tree Frog); Marc Barrard (baritone): l’Horloge comtoise (the Grandfather Clock), le Chat (the Black Cat); Nicolas Courjal (bass): le Fauteuil (the Armchair), un Arbre (a Tree); Ingrid Perruche (soprano): la Chauve-souris (the Bat), la Chouette (the Screech Owl), une Pastourelle (a Shepherdess); Annick Massis (soprano): le Feu (the Fire), la Princesse (the Princess), le Rossignol (the Nightingale); Choeur Britten; Jeune Choeur symphonique; Maîtrise de l’Opéra National de Lyon
Ma Mère l’Oye – complete ballet (1911-1912)