Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ravel’s orchestral reimaginings of his piano originals is that both forms retain their own distinctive flavour. They are effectively different pieces. And even though one might describe the orchestral versions of Le tombeau de Couperin or Pavane pour une infante défunte as elegant or fragrant in their refinement, there is no sense in which the orchestral colours are designed to ‘prettify’ the originals. Their spirit dictates the choices at every turn.

So Le tombeau’s neo-Baroque flavour is Ravel’s way of dusting down and airing Couperin’s originals in a way that renders them less time-specific but still nostalgic in colour and cast. That these elegant and spirited miniatures are also Ravel’s way of remembering fallen comrades from the First World War adds poignancy to their timelessness. The memories are happy ones, and Sakari Oramo keeps them upbeat and buoyant. Indeed, the Prélude is extremely fleet, even a shade breathless in one or two of the corners his Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra have to negotiate. But a freshness pervades and Oramo’s first oboe is very much the star throughout.

Oramo’s overriding purpose here would seem to be to keep his orchestra super-light on its feet. Rhythmic pointing and an all-pervasive piquancy keep the textures open and transparent. Alborado del gracioso ingeniously turns the entire orchestra into a gigantic Spanish guitar – but there is a darkness to the soul of the seductive middle section, where a sultry bassoon turns illicitly beguiling. Contrast that with the wistful cortège of Pavane, where we find solace in a solo horn (Markus Maskuniitty). The challenge here is a serene legato-plus and Oramo and his players don’t disappoint. Alongside it Une barque sur l’océan is very much first cousin to Debussy’s La mer, its choppy waters not at all relatable to the rivers and canals Ravel had in mind. Still, one is content to float on its evocation.

Coming a month after John Wilson’s inaugural and eminently beautiful Ravel disc with his Sinfonia of London, it is interesting to compare the two accounts of La valse. Oramo has perhaps the higher ‘swoon factor’ in that he sees the piece through a somewhat rosier lens. He is definitely more sentimental about the work’s fin de siècle implications and applies the rubato accordingly. Wilson takes a more ‘in tempo’ path to the final catastrophe – the speed of it is shocking in the final pages where the music is pulled grotesquely out of shape – but both are valid. Perhaps I like a bit more theatre than either provides, but the quality of each cannot be denied.