CD 1
Ma mère l’oye – Suite
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra/André
Cluytens
Rec. 20.10.1949, Théâtre
des Champs-Elysées, Paris
Piano Concerto in G*, Pavane pur
une infante défunte
Marguerite Long (piano)*, Symphony Orchestra/Pedro
de Freitas-Branco
Rec. 14.04.1932, Studio Albert, Paris
Daphnis et Chloë – Suite
no. 1
University of California Chorus, San
Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Pierre
Monteux
Rec. 03.04.1946, War Memorial Opera
House, San Francisco
Daphnis et Chloë – Suite
no. 2
Orchestre des Concerts Straram/Philippe
Gaubert
Rec. 24.03.1930, Théâtre
des Champs-Elysées, Paris
Alborada del gracioso
Orchestre des Concerts Straram/Walter
Straram
Rec. 30.03.1931 Théâtre
des Champs-Elysées, Paris
CD 2
Boléro
Lamoureux Orchestra/Maurice Ravel
Rec. 01.1930, Paris
Le tombeau de Couperin
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra/Piero
Coppola
Rec. 27.10.1930, Paris
Valses nobles et sentimentales
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra/Piero
Coppola
Rec. 05.02.1934, Salle du Conservatoire,
Paris
Piano Concerto in D for Left Hand
Alfred Cortot (piano), Paris Conservatoire
Orchestra/Charles Munch
Rec. 12.05.1939, Théâtre
Pigalle, Paris
Boléro
Grand Orchestre Symphonique (du Gramophone)/Piero
Coppola
Rec. 13.01.1930, Salle Pleyel, Paris
CD 3
La valse
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Pierre
Monteux
Rec. 21.04.1941, War Memorial Opera
House, San Francisco
Menuet antique
Lamoureux Orchestra/Albert Wolff
Rec. 01.1930, Paris
Claude DEBUSSY
(1862-1918) orch.
RAVEL
Sarabande, from Pour le piano
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Pierre
Monteux
Rec. 03.04.1946, War Memorial Opera
House, San Francisco
DEBUSSY orch. Ravel
Sarabande, from Pour le piano,
Danse
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Serge Koussevitzky
Rec. 30.10.1930, Symphony Hall, Boston
RAVEL
Rapsodie espagnole
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Serge Koussevitzky
Rec. 23 and 25.04.1945, Symphony Hall,
Boston
Modest MUSSORGSKY
(1839-1881) orch.
RAVEL
Pictures at an Exhibition
Boston Symphony Orchestra/Serge Koussevitzky
Rec. 28-30.10.1930, Symphony Hall, Boston
This Andante album
contains the usual handsome booklet
setting out in three languages the objectives
and transfer philosophy of the company,
with notes on the composer and his music
which seem aimed at first-time listeners
(but surely a first-time listener should
be getting more recent recordings which
do full justice to Ravel’s wonderful
orchestration?). Eventually we get some
notes on the performances by Paul Griffiths
and potted biographies of most of the
performers (de Freitas-Branco is omitted).
I should have liked to have known if
these were all the first recordings
of the respective pieces, and if not
(though some certainly were), when and
by whom their predecessors were made.
The majority of these
recordings were set down while Ravel
was still alive; again, I would have
liked to have known if he was present
in the studios and, if not, are his
comments on any of the performances
preserved?
In many cases early
recordings, made close to the date of
composition and by performers especially
associated with the work, carry a special
authority. As will be seen, I am not
convinced that this album, interesting
though it is, offers any particular
revelations of that kind.
CD 1
CD 1 contains two items,
those under Cluytens and Monteux, which
their respective conductors re-recorded
in stereo – the complete Daphnis
under Monteux (who had conducted
the première) is a classic
of the gramophone. Since both artists
were very consistent in their interpretations
over the years there seems no pressing
reason to hear these early incarnations.
The Monteux certainly testifies to the
high standards he obtained in San Francisco
but the quiet opening is practically
obscured by the background hiss. Cluytens
brought special insights to certain
other works of Ravel, as I shall relate
below.
The G major Piano Concerto
recording was long held in esteem, not
least because it was first issued as
conducted by Ravel himself. This attribution
still appeared on LP transfers in the
1970s but was queried by a correspondent
in Gramophone, followed by a
letter from de Freitas-Branco junior
confirming that it had been conducted
by his father. Yet authority remains,
since Ravel’s favourite pianist was
playing, only three months after the
première (which the composer
did conduct). Marguerite Long
has all the virtues of the old French
school, with sparkling passagework,
a clear sense of line and a generally
unaffected approach. She plays the concerto
as if it had been written by Saint-Saëns.
Evidently this was how Ravel wanted
it, but it must be said that later pianists
such as Michelangeli and Argerich have
uncovered a whole range of subtleties
and insights (no one would guess, here,
that the second subject of the first
movement was inspired by a hearing of
Rhapsody in Blue) without distorting
the nature of the work and I suspect
I speak for most modern listeners when
I say that to my ears Long’s performance
just doesn’t go far enough. De Freitas-Branco’s
Pavane is nicely turned but there
must be hundreds of later recordings
of which one could say the same thing,
many of them offering modern sound.
Philippe Gaubert’s
account of the second Daphnis suite
is much more rewarding. For one thing
it shows that Paris in 1930 could boast
at least one orchestra of a fully international
standard, but more importantly the conductor’s
care for balance and pacing together
with a real sense of poetry and plenty
of energy in the Danse génerale
make for a version which, except
sonically (though the sound is very
reasonable for its date), can take its
place among the best of those that followed.
However, the excellence of this reading
also induces the comforting thought
that, while many performances from the
1930s (Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, let
alone baroque music) sound strikingly
different from what we expect today,
a typical performance of Daphnis
under Abbado, Dutoit or Haitink
(to name just three present-day exponents
of the non-individualistic school) sounds
very much as Ravel himself would have
heard and, presumably, wished. The high
quality of the Walter Straram Orchestra
can also be appreciated in the deft
rendering of Alborada under its
founder.
CD 2
Ravel’s insistence
during a rehearsal conducted by Toscanini
that Boléro should go
at a slow and steady tempo elicited
from that redoubtable demon of the baton
the famous response: "You don’t
understand your own music". The
recording conducted by the composer
himself is generally held up as evidence
of Ravel’s own conductorial incompetence.
It is not really a matter of a slowish
tempo as such – Celibidache was later
to draw it out further still with mesmeric
results – as of a plodding lack of lift
to the accompanying rhythms. This is
shown up by the version recorded in
the same month under a real conductor,
Piero Coppola. It is true that Coppola
allows some adjustments to the tempo
towards the end while Ravel ploughs
steadily on, but he certainly realises
the steady growth from the sultry beginning
to the orgiastic close. It is also revealed
that Polydor were lagging behind HMV
in the development of their recording
techniques – the Coppola has considerably
more presence.
In many ways Coppola
provides the focal point for this second
CD. Born in Milan in 1888 he became
artistic director of French HMV and
in this role recorded a wide range of
mostly French music. He died in 1971.
In the Prélude and the
Rigaudon from Le tombeau de
Couperin he obtains a litheness
and a mercurial grace which elude the
heavier André Cluytens in his
early stereo recording with the same
orchestra. His exact observance of Ravel’s
metronome mark in the first of these
pieces (there is no mark for the Rigaudon,
at least not in the piano version) may
be a coincidence since he is slightly
swifter in the Menuet (though
without any sense of haste) and much
slower in the Forlane. The metronome
marking for this latter piece is quite
impossibly fast, however (I have never
heard it observed), and it is useful
to hear that this was already recognised
in Ravel’s own lifetime. It must be
said, though, that Coppola does not
entirely realise that if this rather
long piece is not to outstay its welcome,
a fuller characterisation of its contrasting
episodes is needed, and here it is Cluytens
who is more successful.
In many ways Cluytens
(1905-1967) assumed a similar role with
post-war French EMI (without actually
being its Artistic Director) to that
of Coppola before the war, recording
the complete works of Debussy and Ravel
and much other French music, but he
was also admired in the German/Austrian
classics. He could be flabby where the
music requires a galvanic approach,
putting his Daphnis at a disadvantage
beside Munch and Monteux, and dull-witted
where pin-point precision was called
for, hence Coppola’s greater success
with most of Le Tombeau. But
he knew how to make an orchestra breathe
and how to elicit a warm sound and sensitive
phrasing from it, and he had an exceptional
feeling for Viennese waltz rhythms as
seen through French eyes. As a result
he conducted Valses nobles et sentimentales,
and also La valse, with a quite
remarkable insight which has hardly
been matched elsewhere. It all boils
down to pacing the three beats of the
waltz rhythm, and in comparison the
admirable Coppola sounds amiable but
ultimately more efficient than inspired.
If there is a tendency
to think of French conductors as elegant,
classical purveyors of their native
music, there was always Charles Munch
on hand to warn against any such typecasting.
His galvanic, euphoric conducting of
the Left-Hand Piano Concerto seethes
with Rite of Spring-ish tension.
Nor was Cortot a "typical"
French pianist – though he was possibly
the greatest of them all. His no-holds-barred,
freely passionate playing, ideally matched
by Munch, may not have represented Ravel’s
ideal but is all the more enthralling
for that! Legend has it that he played
the work in a comfortable version of
his own for both hands but who cares
when the result knocks spots off most
others. In spite of the sonic limitations
this has to be heard.
CD 3
CD 3 begins with another
interpretation that was re-recorded
in stereo: Monteux’s La Valse.
In this case the later Philips recording
has not acquired a particularly classic
status, though it has always been admired,
with the result that the electrifying
San Francisco version is still worth
a hearing. It celebrates the waltz of
the Belle époque with
a verve worthy of Offenbach himself.
However, we know that Ravel wished to
evoke the Viennese waltz and I can only
reiterate my view that in this piece,
as in the Valses nobles et sentimentales,
André Cluytens showed a particular
insight beside which Monteux seems superficial.
The Menuet antique
was recorded in the same month,
with the same orchestra and by the same
company, as Ravel’s own Boléro,
but with a proper conductor noted for
his ballet performances, Albert Wolff.
He shows a firm hand and an easily lilting
approach in an early piece which hardly
calls for more from its interpreter.
Monteux shows his sympathetic hand in
the Debussy arrangement but he is surpassed
in dynamic shading and subtlety of pulse
by Koussevitzky, who is the protagonist
of the remainder of the programme. If
he cannot persuade us that it was worth
Ravel’s while to orchestrate the very
modest early "Danse" by Debussy,
he comes into his own in Rhapsodie
espagnole. As was his wont, tempi
are often on the slow side but with
enormous neurotic, hypnotic tension.
Rather than under romantic half-lights,
Spain is viewed beneath the scorching
midday sun, but such passion, such colour
and such rhythmic flamboyance are unforgettable
and the performance should be heard
by all admirers of Ravel.
The Mussorgsky transcription
was commissioned by Koussevitzky for
the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Again,
one or two tempi seem waywardly slow
but the conductor’s characterisation
of the different pictures, aided by
brilliant orchestral playing, makes
for one of the most rewarding recordings
of a much recorded piece.
On the whole, though,
I can only confirm my earlier impression
that early interpreters of Ravel did
not possess any particular insights
which have not been matched in more
recent years, nor any special sense
of style which has since been lost.
The G Major Piano Concerto has been
illuminated by later performers but
by and large the fanatical precision
with which the music was written does
not leave a lot of space for personalised
interpretations. Furthermore, Ravel
does not belong to an age so very
far distant in history, and several
interpreters who were active in his
own day, Monteux, Munch, Cluytens and
– not represented here – Ernest Ansermet,
lived to record their performances in
stereo so those who wish to study "authentic"
Ravel need not delve far back into the
collector’s world of ancient 78s. Paul
Griffiths’s notes mention string portamento
as a possibly authentic feature which
has disappeared today, but Cluytens’s
1960s recordings with the Paris Conservatoire
Orchestra contain as much of it as any
here. It is certainly interesting for
the broader-based collector to hear
the work of those conductors who did
not survive into the LP era, such as
Gaubert and Coppola, while anything
conducted by Koussevitzky demands to
be heard. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing
most of the performances here, but I
am basically fascinated by performances
of the past, and I fear my recommendation
must be principally to those who share
my interest.
Christopher Howell
This set induces the
comforting thought that, by and large,
modern interpreters of Ravel have got
it about right. … see Full Review
ANDANTE 1978 [3 CDs: 76:46; 77:24; 78:47]