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Ravel: Piano Works

Vanessa Wagner (piano)

There are plenty of deft touches here, but the music does not always flow

Ravel: Piano Works

Vanessa Wagner (piano)

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There are plenty of deft touches here, but the music does not always flow

About

'Pavane pour une infante défunte', an early work, takes us into the world of dance that perfumes the musical world of Ravel. 'Gaspard de la nuit' in the French Romantic tradition, is a triptych inspired by three of Aloysius Bertrand's prose-ballads: Ondine, the water nymph; Le Gibet (Gallows), paints a gruesome picture of 'a bell tolling from the walls of a city, beneath the skyline, and the body of a hanged man, reddened by the setting sun'; Scarbo, depicts the night-time mischief of a mocking dwarf. We return to the dance with the bold 'Valses nobles et sentimentales', a series of waltzes written in 1911. Finally, 'Ma Mère l'Oye' (Mother Goose), shows Ravel's affection for his childhood days. Vanessa Wagner brings out the modernity of these scores, their sudden movements of violence, their moments of ineffable sweetness. She plays with rigour, intensity and a velvet touch.

Contents and tracklist

I. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant
Track length1:49
II. Petit Poucet
Track length2:47
III. Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes
Track length3:05
IV. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête
Track length4:36
V. Le jardin féérique
Track length3:33
I. Modéré
Track length1:12
II. Assez lent
Track length2:17
III. Modéré
Track length1:22
IV. Assez animé
Track length1:04
V. Presque lent
Track length00:50
VI. Assez vif
Track length00:46
VII. Moins vif
Track length3:25
VIII. Lent
Track length5:05
I. Ondine
Track length6:25
II. Le Gibet
Track length8:26
III. Scarbo
Track length9:19

Awards and reviews

July 2014

There are plenty of deft touches here, but the music does not always flow

August 2014

There are good things in the faster numbers of Valses nobles and she manages to convey the vigour of the opening without becoming percussive...On the whole, Wagner is most convicing in the fast music; in slower numbers her rubato is arguably over-generous.
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