Understandably, with so much of Ravel’s orchestral music available in fine recordings, producers are now looking for new pegs on which to hang their versions. The peg here is Marius Constant’s orchestration of Gaspard de la nuit (even if, slightly naughtily, the cover refers to ‘orchestral versions’ of all the items, not choosing to distinguish between Constant’s and Ravel’s) with interleaved recitations of the Aloysius Bertrand poems which inspired Ravel and an appendix of Tzimon Barto playing the original ‘Ondine’.

As pegs go, I’ve come across worse. But we’re still faced with the inescapable fact that Ravel could always have orchestrated these three pieces himself and didn’t; and that he withdrew his orchestration of Une barque sur l’océan, even though many listeners find it ravishing. Leaving moral questions aside, we find an almost entirely efficient piece of work, spoilt only by moments of doubtful balance, which Eschenbach either does not address or finds intractable. In particular the bells in ‘Le gibet’ are not loud enough – Ravel insisted ‘they toll unwearyingly’, implying surely that we should find them wearying. Here they vanish for long stretches.

Elsewhere Eschenbach’s readings are spoilt by inaccuracies of ensemble, as in the failure to synchronize harp and piccolo at the end of the Menuet in Le tombeau (4’40”). Worse still, at the end of the Prélude the harp misreads the clef, beginning the glissando with a treble E instead of a bass G (3’07”), and the bassoon soloist in Alborada simply sounds bored. Not a competitor in a tough market.