One wonders whether there will ever be a falling-off in the apparently insatiable desire of conductors and the record companies to give us yet more versions of these admittedly beautiful orchestral pieces by a French master; and one marvels too at the presumably similar appetite for this repertory on the part of the record-buying public, for whom Ravel now appears to be the classical composer par excellence in the way that Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov were two generations ago.
Still, there is room for a new issue of this quality. Michael Tilson Thomas brings a clear affection to the music but stops the right side of wearing his heart on his sleeve, so that phrases are caressed, not least in Ma mere l'oye, with a certain pudeur. In this work tempos are sometimes leisurely—the conversation between Beauty and the Beast is a minute slower than Abbado's more flowing performance for DG, but if this arguably brings a gain in expressive depth I am less attracted by a Rapsodie espagnole that feels self conscious and in which each movement lasts significantly longer than with Abbado. Still, here and elsewhere the LSO play most responsively—just as they do for Abbado, recorded in 1985, the Bolero is reliably exciting and the orchestral transcription of the Piece en forme de habanera (the one rarity here, with John Harle as the expressive saxophonist) is delightful.
The CBS producer Steven Epstein has used two venues, the Henry Wood Hall and the EMI Abbey Road Studio No. 1 in London, to achieve a wide dynamic range and a warmly reverberant sound as well as some vivid percussion sonority that is impressive but larger than life, say in the tiny Fanfare. This is an issue to give pleasure, but given a choice I would suggest Abbado and the same orchestra for more straightforward but still sensitive performances of the three main works, only his Bolero being less well controlled in tempo and sonority than the rest. His DG recording is less spectacular than the CBS but more faithful-sounding and possibly easier to live with. Both CDs are generously filled at well over 60 minutes.'