RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR

July

‘The Presto is glistening and fast-paced but never in danger of losing control, the wind players enjoying their moments in the sun’

Harriet Smith applauds an extraordinary and revelatory album of Ravel from Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth, including the two piano concertos with Cédric Tiberghien

Ravel Two Piano Concertosa. Don Quichotte à Dulcinéeb. Deux Mélodies hébraïquesb. Pavane pour une infante défunte. Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarméb. Sainteb Cédric Tiberghien pf bStéphane Degout bar a Les Siècles / François-Xavier Roth Harmonia Mundi (HMM90 2612 • 74’ • T/t)

Every now and again accounts of Ravel’s concertos come along that set new standards: the G major from Michelangeli and Gracis in 1957 (Warner, 1/58) and from Argerich and Abbado in the 1960s (DG, 2/68); then, in the mid-1990s, both concertos from Zimerman and Boulez (DG, 2/99). And, despite a plethora of other outstanding readings, here’s another game-changer.

That is as much down to François-XavierRoth and Les Siècles (an ensemble that next year celebrates its 20th birthday and whose period-instrument timbres have shed fresh light on repertoire from Berlioz to Stravinsky) as it is to Cédric Tiberghien. He brings his chamber-musical sensibilities and a Gallic suavity to every bar he plays and the piano, a Pleyel from 1892, is gloriously well chosen, the glissandos coming off with ease, while the relative translucency of the lowermost range is a revelation. But more of that in a moment.

From the first bar of the G major, what strikes anew is Ravel’s originality in terms of instrumental combinations. Needless to say, my listening notes ran to dozens of examples, but I’m going to have restrict myself to just a few. These are the sort of performances that pull you back to the score, checking details you’d never fully noticed previously.

Tiberghien brings to the first movement a sense of playful energy, flexibility and an acute awareness of colour (for instance, in his dark-hued bass scales from 3'30", which have a lovely clarity to them), while passages such as the harp cadenza against sustained cello (4'29") have you revelling in Ravel’s invention afresh. Tiberghien imbues the long solo-piano opening of the Adagio with such a confiding PHO T O G R A P H Y

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18 GRAMOPHONE GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2022

gramophone.co.uk