Maurice RAVEL (1875–1937)
Piano Concerto in G (1932) [21:43]
Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (1933) [7:15]
Deux mélodies hébraïques (1914) [6:15]
Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899) [5:44]
Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913) [11:34]
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1930) [18:47]
Sainte (1896) [2:31]
Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Stéphane Degout (baritone)
Les Siècles/François-Xavier Roth
rec. 2020/21, Grand salle Pierre Boulez (concertos), Le Studio (mélodies and Pavane), Philharmonie de Paris, France
HARMONIA MUNDI HMM902612 [73:49]
This disc from François-Xavier Roth - the latest entry in his ongoing Maurice Ravel series for Harmonia Mundi - provides further confirmation that he is the most interesting conductor active today, perhaps even the greatest. In a time where collectors can feel adrift in a vast wasteland of new recordings of standard repertoire conducted by one photogenic bore after another, the French conductor is among the few today who dare to believe that the preservation of tradition lays not in worshiping a cult of ashes, but in the transmission of fire.
Unlike with music from the 18th and 19th centuries, recorded evidence of early 20th century “period style” is not only abundant, but also mostly contradicts the anachronistic notions of “historical accuracy.” (Would that there were another Gustav Mahler today to point out that what many call “historically-informed” is often so much modern-day schlamperei.) Roth’s stylistic incongruenceputting “period” principles to work on performances of his chosen scores that can be anything but com’è scritto - is no miscalculation borne from unswerving fidelity to his interpretive commandments. Rather, it is simultaneously a deliberate provocation that goads his listeners into rethinking their preconceived notions about the standard repertoire that they thought they had known so well and an artful subversion of a “period” movement that has grown too comfortable, too self-satisfied.
The frictive dynamic between Roth and pianist Cédric Tiberghien (playing on a Pleyel “Grand patron” from 1892) energize their coruscating recordings of Ravel’s two piano concertos. Both works are among the most abused and overused in 20th-century music; especially the glittering G-major concerto, a popular vehicle for vacuous virtuosi who seize upon its outer movements as a cheap prop for self-display, while making a maudlin wreck of its central movement.
Roth and Tiberghien turn the opening movement on its head by muting rather than unduly emphasizing its sub-Gershwin gestures; an interpretive choice that brings to mind André Hodeir’s assessment that the influence of jazz upon Ravel and classical music had been overstated by critics. Instead the tart chirping of the solo flute, flapping cheerfully over the arpeggiating crystalline cascade of the piano, transport the listener not to a Parisian’s idealized reverie of Jazz Age Harlem, but to the real Euskal Herria that was Ravel’s ancestral homeland. The instrumental colors allude to the tappings of the txalaparta, the piping of the txistu; further evidence supporting Gustave Samazeuilh, who once wrote that his friend Ravel had reused portions of Zaspiak Bat, an unfinished work intended as an homage to the Basque nation, in the much later Piano Concerto in G. Tiberghien’s solo follows seamlessly, spurning the usual sentimentality in favor of discreet rubati and limpid phrasing. His reading of the “Adagio assai” is a marvel of poise and delicate understatement; its dewy thread of melody kept ethereally taut, yet yielding at crucial expressive points. He pounces upon the Petrushka-like finale that follows with the athletic grace of a ballet dancer, never stooping to the coarse stomping of his lessers.
The Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is treated to an even finer performance that is an improbable (and successful) blend of Ravelian lyricism with an almost Brahmsian grandeur. Les Siècles’ contrabasses render the work’s opening measures with a transparency I have never heard bettered on records, yet they manage to retain the mysterious air of dormant power that lies in wait for the contrabassoon; here emitting a wonderfully gurgling, croaking, amphibian sonority upon its entry. Tiberghien is the ideal fusion of heroism and contemplation in the concerto’s cadenzas, reflecting the duality of mood that also gives this work its peculiar aura. Bright, crisp period trumpets—a welcome contrast to the bland and strident sound of their modern equivalents - lead the way in the thumping march at the heart of this work, with Roth cannily conveying its transition from silly to sinister. If Tiberghien was a more assertive (but never showboating) soloist in the G-major concerto, he is here a suave partner with the orchestra, collaborating on a unified conception that is more symphonic than concertante.
The remainder of the disc’s program is filled out with a clutch of Ravel’s mélodies and Tiberghien’s supple treatment of the deathless Pavane pour une infante défunte. The pianist is joined in the mélodies by baritone Stéphane Degout, whose expressive word-painting heightens the Schoenbergian otherworldliness of “Surgi de la croup et du bond,” the last of the Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.
As lovely as the disc fillers are, the performances of the concertos are the reason to buy this disc. What Roth and Tiberghien accomplish here verges on a musical equivalent of steampunk: futuristic nostalgia-tinted reimaginations of a past that never quite existed. Brimming with personality, yet never self-absorbed, these compelling performances—which manage to also be a kind of running commentary on Ravel, his music, and how we hear it—present a unique aural experience which rewards your considered listening.
Néstor Castiglione
