Ravel : Miroirs, Tombeau de Couperin, Sonatine

Description

Ravel was a master craftsman. Driven by precision and accuracy, he wrote his music with the utmost meticulousness. Due to his paternal lineage, there was a Swiss watchmaker in him. However, while La Vallée des Cloches, the last piece of Miroirs, implicitly references Switzerland, those bells are not the ones that tell the correct time. Their sounds seem to float in the air from one side of a valley to the other, drowning in their own echoes. Yet, as precise as it is, his music still reveals a certain ambiguity. An ambiguity he knew how to wield like a master, both in the harmonic realm, in orchestration, and in the mastery of the colors of the pianistic sound palette. Light and dark constantly coexist in this musician's work. Ravel aimed to be objective. He even wrote about Miroirs, a collection that has often been associated with Impressionist aesthetics: "this word mirror should not suggest to anyone that I intend to assert a subjectivist theory of art." "Do not interpret my music, just play it," he said. Ravel did not seek to be precise: he was. His ear was probably among the finest one could imagine. The precision with which he noted the most suitable dynamics has been a widely shared subject of admiration among musicians who played his works. That singular voice of his, the harmonic sophistication, the poetry that expresses itself in so many moments in his music, often outweighs a style that is willingly variegated (colorful, as the young Boulez would write!), a mixture of sometimes surprising national influences, and a certain indifference — to say the least, negligence — in form. The often-cited proximity to his elder Debussy easily falls apart in these areas. To the meticulous Ravel, a sharp sense of the most exact writing, a craft honed to perfection, and to the wandering Debussy, a deceptively lazy alchemy that opens the doors to novelty. (Excerpt from the booklet - Philippe Manoury)