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Maurice Ravel


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I love much of the piano music...a particular favourite, for sentimental reasons, is the beautiful 'Menuet Sur Le Nom De Haydn'.

That's what I've been checking out, no specific titles yet. I just spin the disc and enjoy.

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Love Ravel - though I prefer Debussy in solo piano music. A bit more fluid and diaphanous to my ears. There's something a bit more straight backed about Ravel.

The orchestral music is wonderful, especially 'Ma Mere L'Oye' and the two piano concertos.

My absolute favourite is the Introduction and Allegro for small chamber group - perfect music for a verdant summer's day. The piano trio and string quartet are also superb.

This set of Ravel songs is highly recommended (I have it in an earlier version):

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Includes a version of Scherazade.

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it took me a while to start liking Ravel's solo piano works (being more of a Debussy fan), but now I'm sold. And I really like his work with older forms, making them new and fresh.

Am also a fan of his chamber music and many of his songs - like the Chansons Madecasses.

Edited by seeline
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My first choice for for his orchestral works:

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I have never heard a more moving version of the piano concerto for the left hand! This includes the only recent recording of the Bolero in the exact tempo the composer wanted - already his contemporaries started to ignore his wishes, much to his dismay.

For his piano works, his own recording for Welte-Mignon pianos would be my first choice - about to be reissued, I will post here as soon as it is out.

Edited by mikeweil
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He's...like...the guy who wrote Bolero, yet so much more...thoughts? discussion?

Hi, I am a newbie to this forum and came to it by googling 'Unravelling Bolero' which is a work of art by Anne Adams, as reported in New Scientist

"Boléro: 'Beautiful symptom of a terrible disease'

* 30 April 2008

** Magazine issue 2654

SOME paintings are meant to be appreciated in silence. Not this one. Called Unravelling Boléro, it is a bar-by-bar representation of Maurice Ravel's iconic orchestral piece Boléro, created by the Canadian artist Anne Adams. It also happens to provide an intriguing window into the creative mind.

After Adams had completed the piece in 1994, it emerged that she was suffering from the neurodegenerative condition known as primary progressive aphasia. The disease later robbed Adams of speech, and eventually took her life. In its early stages, however, it seemed to unleash a flowering of neural development in a brain area that integrates information from different senses. Unravelling Boléro may be a beautiful symptom of a terrible disease, or so say a group of neurologists led by William Seeley and Bruce Miller of the University of California, San Francisco. ...."

Ravel is also thought to have had the same disease!

I couldn't send an image of Adams' picture, sorry, but you can see it in the New Scientist mag.

My question is has anyone produced a video clip that combines Adams picture with Ravel's Bolero? If so I would love to see it.

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  • 4 years later...

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On the day I bought my first CD player in 1985, this was one of the three discs I bought. I've never had need of another version of the Ravel.

On a different subject, this bio is quite recent - one I keep meaning to buy. Nichols is a superb writer and broadcaster; incredible knowledge on French music but able to communicate in an unstuffy way:

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Edited by A Lark Ascending
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