Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937)
Daphnis et Chloé – complete ballet (1909-12) [58:07]
Une barque sur l’océan (1904-05, orch. 1906) [7:36]
Spirito; Orchestre National de Lyon/Leonard Slatkin
rec.10-13 June 2015 (Daphnis); 6 September 2011, Auditorium de Lyon, France
NAXOS 8.573545 [65:43]
This is the fourth instalment of Leonard Slatkin’s series
of Ravel’s orchestral music with l’Orchestre National de Lyon,
one of two orchestras of which he is the Music Director. It’s the first
of the series that has come to me for review. Previous volumes have been tackled
by several of my colleagues: Vol.
1 ~ Vol
2 ~ Vol
3. He has also made recordings in Lyon of both of Ravel’s operas:
L’Enfant et les sortilèges (review)
and L’Heure espagnole (review).
Though I haven’t heard any of Slatkin’s previous Ravel performances
I found much to enjoy here. Naxos present the performance well, dividing the
score into 15 separate tracks. Better still, Keith Anderson’s very good
notes include a synopsis of the action which tells you what’s going
on during each track; that’s extremely helpful.
Slatkin conducts the ballet with evident understanding and his orchestra plays
it very well. In addition the choral contribution is excellent – the
members of Spirito are heard to excellent effect in the extended and largely
unaccompanied ‘Interlude’ at the start of Part II. They also sing
quite splendidly in the big moments such as the Introduction, ‘Lever
du jour’ and in the concluding ‘Danse générale’.
At the outset, in the Introduction, the scene is set beautifully by languid
orchestral playing and a soft but well-focused choral sound. In passing, though,
it’s slightly ironic that the principal horn of this French orchestra
produces a less French, more cosmopolitan sound than does his colleague in
the Montreal Symphony who plays on Charles Dutoit’s 1980 Decca recording.
Slatkin conveys Daphnis’s shy hesitancy in ‘Daphnis s’approche’
and subsequently, the clumsiness of Dorcon also comes over well in the ‘Danse
grotesque de Dorcon’. That said, Dutoit, who is slightly steadier at
this point, is even better, while Pierre Boulez, in his 1994 DG recording
with the Berliner Philharmoniker really takes advantage of the Pesant marking
and brings expert definition to this passage.
I like the delicacy and atmosphere in ‘Nocturne’; here Slatkin
is well-served – as he is throughout the performance – by the
Lyon woodwind principals and solo horn. The following ‘Danse lente et
mystérieuse des Nymphes’ has the necessary fragility and delicate refinement
to it while, in complete contrast, the ‘Danse guerrière’ is strongly
projected. In ‘Danse suppliante de Chloé’ I admired the pliant
and plangent solo cor anglais; furthermore, in this number there’s very
good definition of incident as the narrative of the scene unfolds.
Slatkin manages ‘Lever du jour’ very well and after he’s
built up the tension there’s a great sense of release at the main climax
(track 13, 4:50). However, neither the performance nor the recording is as
sumptuous as Dutoit and Decca achieved in Montreal. Boulez is expansive in
this passage and there’s much more warmth than you might expect from
this allegedly cool conductor for whom the Berliner Philharmoniker produce
fabulous playing. In ‘Pantomime’ the Lyon orchestra offers plenty
of refined playing and the principal flute, who should have been credited,
is super. It has to be said, though, that few conductors can match the subtlety
and flexibility that one encounters in Pierre Monteux’s classic 1959
recording (review).
In the concluding ‘Danse générale’ Slatkin brings the ballet to
an exciting conclusion though he doesn’t quite sweep the listener off
his or her feet in the way that Dutoit, who is appreciably faster, achieves.
Summing up, my own preference among modern recordings would still be the Dutoit.
I’m conscious that the recording is now nearly 37 years old; I use “modern”
to differentiate it from two truly classic accounts from the 1950s. One of
these is the aforementioned Monteux recording. He conducted the score’s
premiere in 1912 and 47 years later he could still illuminate it in a wonderful
and wholly convincing way. The other is Charles Munch’s 1955 Boston
Symphony performance on RCA. That’s more wilful at times than Monteux
– or, indeed, any of the other conductors considered here – but
it remains a fantastic, hedonistic performance; in ‘Lever du jour’,
for example, Munch delivers a magnificent, spacious evocation of the morning
sun.
If Slatkin doesn’t quite match the achievement of those three conductors
I hope I’ve conveyed in these comments that his is still a fine account
of this miraculous, subtle masterpiece. Collectors who are following his Ravel
series can invest with confidence and I doubt that anyone else acquiring this
disc will be disappointed.
As a ‘filler’ Slatkin offers Ravel’s own orchestration of
Une barque sur l’océan. In its original form this was one of his set
of piano pieces given the collective title Miroirs. I learned from the notes
that when the piece was unveiled in its orchestral guise it was coolly received;
indeed, the orchestration remained unpublished until 1950, long after Ravel’s
death. Why the orchestral version should not have found favour is a mystery
since the music is evocative and the orchestration is the work of a master
craftsman. It gets a fine performance here,
It only remains to say that the recorded sound is very good and, as is so
often the case, Keith Anderson’s notes offer a valuable guide to the
music and its background.
John
Quinn
Previous review:
Paul Corfield Godfrey
|
Support us financially by purchasing
this from
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|