Tanja Hotz - Ravel: Piano Works (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

The piano music of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) is often upheld alongside that of his contemporary Claude Debussy as quintessentially French and Impression­ist. The reality is more complicated. Neither he nor Debussy were fond of the term ‘Impressionist’ at all, and although born in southern France, there wasn’t really much that was ‘French’ about Ravel. His father was Swiss (not for nothing did Stravinsky nickname Ravel a ‘Swiss clockmaker’) and his mother was Span­ish Basque. If he’d been born eight kilometres further south, Spain could have claimed Ravel as her own. But the family moved to Paris just a few months after Mau­rice was born, which meant his musical upbringing benefited from everything that the capital could offer.

Ravel’s early teachers were all trained at the Paris Conservatoire – long one of Europe’s most august such institutions – and he himself was accepted into its ranks in November 1889. After initial successes, however, his results dwindled and he left in 1895; he returned two years later, but his problematic relation­ship with the institution did not improve. From 1900 to 1905 he failed five times to win the Prix de Rome that so many illustrious predecessors had won before him, from Hector Berlioz to Debussy. By the time of his final failure, however, he had already established such a reputation outside the Conservatoire that his elimination caused a major scandal, forcing the resignation of its Director.

Ravel’s Pavane for a dead infanta of 1899 is his earliest work to enter the repertoire, and it became so popular that he later claimed to dislike it. But it well deserves its fame, and in its apparent simplicity it foreshadows many aspects of the later Ravel, from its semi-modal air that keeps us guessing just which key we’re in, to its firm foundation in the bass – not to mention the manner in which Ravel can shift the meaning of a passage by repeating it with different harmony for the upper line.

Tracklist:
01 Pavane pour une infante défunte, M. 19_ Assez doux, mais d’une sonorité large
02 Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55_ I. Ondine. Lent
03 Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55_ II. Le Gibet. Très lent
04 Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55_ III. Scarbo. Modéré
05 Jeux d'eau, M. 30_ Très doux
06 Miroirs, M. 43_ I. Noctuelles. Très léger
07 Miroirs, M. 43_ II. Oiseaux tristes. Très lent
08 Miroirs, M. 43_ III. Une barque sur l'océan. D'un rythme souple
09 Miroirs, M. 43_ IV. Alborada del gracioso. Assez vif
10 Miroirs, M. 43_ V. La Vallée des cloches. Très lent


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