Ravel - Piano Concertos, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Pavane
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Label: Alpha
Cat No: ALPHA1162
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Release Date: 19th September 2025
Contents
Works
Pavane pour une infante defunte (piano)Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand
Piano Concerto in G major
Valses nobles et sentimentales
Artists
Nelson Goerner (piano)Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo
Conductor
Kazuki YamadaWorks
Pavane pour une infante defunte (piano)Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand
Piano Concerto in G major
Valses nobles et sentimentales
Artists
Nelson Goerner (piano)Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo
Conductor
Kazuki YamadaAbout
Nelson Goerner has always dreamed of recording these two masterpieces of the concerto repertoire. With Kazuki Yamada, he has found the ideal partner to approach Ravel’s two piano concertos with the sensitivity and poetry for which he is universally renowned. The two works, composed at the same time and both performed for the first time in 1932, are nevertheless very different: premiered in Vienna, the Concerto for the Left Hand was commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in 1914; premiered in Paris, the Concerto in G is renowned for its verve and its famous pianistic interpolations. Ravel had composed the Pavane pour une infante défunte, a famous miniature of exquisite nostalgia, some 33 years earlier. The programme is completed by the Valses nobles et sentimentales; Marguerite Long, who gave the first performance of the Concerto in G, saw these eight linked pieces as a “stylistic panorama of the waltz”.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Piano Concerto in G major, M83: 1. Allegramente
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2Piano Concerto in G major, M83: 2. Adagio assai
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3Piano Concerto in G major, M83: 3. Presto
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4Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 1. Modéré, très franc
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5Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 2. Assez lent, avec une expression intense
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6Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 3. Modéré
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7Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 4. Assez animé
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8Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 5. Presque lent, dans un sentiment intime
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9Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 6. Vif
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10Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 7. Moins vif
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11Valses nobles et sentimentales, M61: 8. Épilogue. Lent
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12Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand, M.82: 1a. Lento
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13Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand, M.82: 1b. Più lento
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14Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand, M.82: 2a. Allegro
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15Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand, M.82: 2b. Più vivo ed accelerando
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16Pavane pour une infante défunte, M19
Europadisc Review
There has been no shortage of releases marking this year’s 150th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel, from classic reissues to new recordings (including several surveys of the complete piano works). The anniversary itself was back in March, but still the discs keep coming, and a particularly fine album on the Alpha label has captured our interest. Nelson Goerner’s coupling of the two piano concertos with the Valses nobles et sentimentales and the ever-popular Pavane pour une infante défunte was set down in Monaco earlier this year, just a few weeks after the big day itself (7 March). In the concertos he is partnered by the Orchestre philharmonique de Monte-Carlo (OPMC) under their music director, Kazuki Yamada (who also occupies the same post at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra).
Yamada is building a formidable reputation in the French repertoire, and he and his players make an ideal team with Goerner. Both concertos date from the early 1930s, and are Ravel’s final orchestral works, reflecting a new clarity and focus in terms of orchestration. While they both contain jazz influences, and both come in around the 20-minute mark, they are in many respects highly contrasted. The three-movement Concerto in G major took some two years to compose, combining jazz inflections with the more classical shades of Saint-Saëns and (in the slow movement) Mozart. The Concerto in D major for the left hand, a commission from the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (who lost his lower right arm after being shot in the elbow during the Great War), took just nine months to complete, with Ravel rising to the technical challenge with some of his noblest and most brilliant late music.
Goerner doesn’t play down the contrasts between the two works: he is sparklingly alert and playful in the outer movements of the G major Concerto, and wonderfully imposing in the Left Hand Concerto. Yet to both pieces he brings a pliancy and transparency that is helped by a recording that favours a more natural balance than the up-close sound favoured on some rival versions. It takes just a while to adjust to this, but the upshot is that soloist and orchestra engage on equal terms. The G major work gets off to a cracking start, and there’s a palpable neoclassical mood to the opening pages, as well as some marvellous jazzy swooning and perfectly judged rubato. The ‘impressionistic’ swirls later on have rarely sounded so magical, with just the right degree of indulgence.
The central Adagio assai, a loving tribute to Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, contains in its 33-bar opening solo one of Ravel’s most beautiful ever creations, a very un-Wagnerian ‘endless melody’. When the orchestra then joins in, the added textural and harmonic depth is meltingly gorgeous, with some achingly expressive woodwind solos. The concluding Presto, with its punctuating cabaret chords and circus atmosphere is a real firecracker, while the OPMC’s bassoons and lower brass deserve special mention, and Goerner sustains the astonishingly agile perpetuum mobile feel right to the end.
Usefully, the D major Concerto is divided into four tracks, allowing the listener to grasp the underlying formal divisions of this single-movement work. From the work’s opening subterranean growlings, this is a particularly immersive experience, the orchestra setting up a grandiose, oriental-tinged entry for the soloist. It took Ravel both hands to play what Wittgenstein could do (after initial misgivings) with one, and Goerner is in imperious command of the solo part from his opening cadenza onwards. Sensitive solo passages alternate with impassioned orchestral tuttis in the Più lento ‘slow movement’, and there’s a combination of menace and swagger to the march-like Allegro, before a return to a more imposing tone in the final section, and a close that is thrillingly driven home. This is a piece that punches well above its weight, and Goerner and Yamada together are alive to its subtleties as well as to its overarching singularity of purpose.
Recorded in the same warm acoustic, the Valses nobles et sentimentales are placed between the two concertos and have about them a sense of space that perfectly complements the dreamlike qualities of Goerner’s interpretation. There’s no lack of incisiveness when needed, however, as in the opening waltz; but the delicacy and expertly-judged rhythmic inflections create a visionary feel to the whole performance. I particularly enjoyed the way in which the sixth waltz steadily cranks into motion, while the rapt mood of the G major Concerto’s Adagio seeps into both the Valses and the Pavane which brings this spellbinding disc to a perfect close. For its command of nuance and timbre, this new Ravel disc is something very special. In a competitive market, this is still something very special, and a worthy anniversary tribute.
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