Following his superb traversal of Ravel's Complete Piano Music Bertrand Chamayou adds a fascinating, endlessly shifting kaleidoscope where he enters the composer's workshop. He combines this with tributes by contemporaries conveying, in widely differing ways, the awe and affection with which Ravel was held' a worthy answer to Stravinsky's sniping reference to a 'Swiss Watchmaker.' Already in the opening 'Trois Beaux Oiseaux du paradis,'—delicate wistful and remote-- you hear the composer's unmistakable voice. Among the tributes Nin's 'Mensaje a Ravel' reminds you that Ravel's mother was a Basque, that beneath the quintessential cool and clarity lay a more heated quality. Then there is Salvatore Sciarrino's ' De la nuit', an astonishing prototype of 'Gaspard de l Nuit' with Scarbo's malignant and skittering waltz evoked through a wild, hallucinatory web of sound and with a final passing reference to 'Ondine's opening and ever-present syncopated shake. Frederic Durieux locates the underling darkness breaking through a seemingly impassive, jade-like surface, while RIcardo Vines, a tireless champion of Ravel's music, conveys all of his courage, awe and affection(he gave the first performance of 'Miroirs' in Paris only to find it greeted with incomprehension and contempt).
That there was a violent streak in Ravel, the result of a severely repressed nature, is never more evident than in 'La Valse,' (Ravel's Mephisto Waltz, if you like) where the traditional Viennese idiom is seen through a distorting mirror, before being whirled to destruction in an apocalyptic close. High among Ravel's most audacious triumphs La'Valse' reflects a civilization brought close to extinction by World War 1. In its early form its skeletal writing cries out for elaboration which it receives from Chamayou as it does in other outstanding recordings by Leonard Pennario. Louis Lortie, Nicolas Angelich and, most of all, from Martha Argerich and Nelson Friere in the two piano version.
Whatever the demands, whether intimate or sardonic, reserved or explsoive(''De la nuit' exploits a virtuoso technique and evocation brilliantly supplied by Chamayou) tmchis record provides a remarkable insight into Ravel. The playing is as stylish as it is brilliant; enterprise and revelation could hardly go further.
Bryce Morrison