This collection of Ravel’s most popular piano works restores to the catalogue all the Ravel that Vladimir Ashkenazy ever recorded – a thrilling ‘Gaspard’ (his second – 1982 – recording of this work) as well as the ‘Pavane’ and ‘Valses’. The coupling presents the gifted young pianist, Naida Cole, in an ethereal ‘Jeux d’eau’ and one of the most amazingly vibrant ‘Miroirs’ ever to be recorded. Has the evocation of moths in ‘Noctuelles’ ever been more picturesquely conveyed…?
MAURICE RAVEL
Gaspard de la nuit
Pavane pour une Infante defunte
Valses nobles et sentimentales
Jeux d’eau
Miroirs
Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano [1-3]
Naida Cole, piano [4-5]
Ashkenazy’s [recording of Gaspard], is the most dramatic, and the most unified – not least because of the seemingly limitless, yet precisely directed, energy with which he performs this movement. [His] Valses are, again, as fine a piece of Ravel-playing as I have heard: highly poetic, shaded by a remarkable diversity of nuances and with a sensitive regard for contrasts in tempo’ Gramophone
‘Cole is a major young talent … her playing is consistently engaging, with her gossamer filigree outstanding’ Fanfare
‘Nearly 77 minutes of stunning piano playing; this is a disc to treasure’ MusicWeb