Ravel's piano works include some of the most popular keyboard pieces of the 20th century, so pianist Philippe Bianconi has plenty of competition for this double-album complete cycle. Of course, one advantage of the complete set is that it can include the less common pieces like Ravel's musical impressions of Borodin and Chabrier and the Menuet en Ut dièse mineur ("Minuet in C sharp minor"). These lesser-known works, mostly miniatures, fit Bianconi's style beautifully; he is a precise, concise player who brings out Ravel's considerable rhythmic subtlety. His Ravel performances tap into a long French tradition stretching back to Robert Casadesus and his wife, Gaby, who was one of Bianconi's teachers. Imbued with the French conservatory values of clarity and restraint, Bianconi sacrifices mood for clean execution. In Le Tombeau de Couperin, he is wonderful, one of the very best available, catching the ways Ravel stretches the Baroque rhythms in a really uncanny way. Many pianists can handle the technical challenges of Gaspard de la nuit these days, but few can seem as effortless while doing so. In music that depends more on extramusical references, such as the four-hand Ma mère l'Oye (recorded with Clément Lefebvre), some listeners may want a bit more color, while others will find Bianconi's approach bracing and fresh, with an evocative Miroirs. Sample several different works. Most listeners will agree that the La Dolce Volta label's sound, from the Grande Salle at the Metz Arsenal, is ideal for the music and the music-making here. © James Manheim /TiVo

Maurice Ravel's orchestral works are universally regarded as models of the art of orchestration, and this 4-CD box set from Deutsche Grammophon presents them complete, in stupendous live performances by Lionel Bringuier and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. These recordings, made between 2014 and 2015, capture every aspect of Ravel's genius, from the colorful transcriptions of his piano pieces to works composed specifically for orchestra. While the ever-popular Boléro is a textbook example of how to use tone colors for a cumulative effect, such lavish pieces as the ballets Daphnis et Chloé and La Valse are sumptuous in their lush textures and vibrant sonorities. Bringuier is an enthusiastic advocate for Ravel's music, and his expertise is apparent in his meticulous interpretations and in the precision of the musicians, who play with rhythmic accuracy and polished execution. Featured soloists in these performances are the virtuoso pianist Yuja Wang, who is exciting in the Piano Concerto in G major and the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major, and violinist Ray Chen, who delivers a compelling reading of Tzigane. In the remaining selections, the Tonhalle shines with brilliant luster, and Deutsche Grammophon's reproduction is first-rate, with its depth, detail, and dynamic range approaching audiophile quality.© TiVo

The Quatuor Arod has demonstrated versatility in its catalog thus far, devoting albums in a range running from Mendelssohn to the Second Viennese School. The same versatility is present on this release. True, the Debussy String Quartet, Op. 10, and the Ravel String Quartet in F major are cut from the same cloth; Ravel modeled his quartet on Debussy's, but these works require a multiplicity of voices, with Debussy striving to infuse his new coloristic thinking into an arch-classical form. Sample the intense finale of Ravel's quartet for a taste of the sharp profiles this young group brings to each movement. Perhaps the biggest draw here is a work by a composer, Benjamin Attahir, of whom most listeners outside France will be unaware. His five-movement quartet Al' Asr, he says, "is the afternoon prayer. I tried to transcribe musically the atmosphere of this specific moment of the day. Raw light, overwhelming heat, iridescence of the air in contact with the surface of the ground -- so many images that accompanied me when writing this piece." It also refers to a brief verse from the Quran. The work successfully merges these specific references with the formal quartet structure, including a final fugue that marks a new take on the Romantic usage of this form to signify spiritual transcendence. There is much to ponder on this release, which continues to promise great things from its performers.© James Manheim /TiVo

After recently terminating his career as a pianist, Ilja Hurník has gained more scope for devoting to composing and writing. Hurník studied the piano with pedagogues of such renown as V. Kurz, I. Štěpánová-Kurzová and V. Novák and has given numerous concerts abroad (including a four-hand performance with Pavel Štěpán), with his interpretations of Debussy and Janáček being particularly captivating. He has given back to Janáček the earthiness and crispness resulting from the Lachian dialect and purged Debussy of the "Impressionistic mist" and accumulated layers of brush strokes, turning the audience's attention to the compositions' subtle drawing and structure. When listening to the presented recordings, one will be hard pressed indeed to believe that they were made a full half-century ago. Hurník's ninetieth birthday is an appropriate opportunity to recall them: this reissue in a carefully remastered version will certainly be welcomed not only by his contemporaries. © Supraphon

Pianist Vincent Larderet has emerged as a specialist in the music of Ravel (and also Scriabin, where he sounds very different), and here, he undertakes a complete cycle of the composer's solo piano music. There will be four albums in all, leaving room for some rarities. All the works here are well known, albeit some better in orchestral guise. Larderet's basic style is clean, coming out of a long tradition that stretches back to Ravel himself through Vlado Perlemuter, and for this recording, he used personal copies of the manuscripts collected by Perlemuter, containing Ravel's own interpretive markings. Thus this recording might be regarded as doubly authentic. As such, it is quite interesting. In Larderet's hands, Ravel is crisper than usual, even percussive at times, avoiding an overemphasis on hazy Impressionist elements. Sample the Alborada del Gracioso, from Miroirs, a rather rocking ride. When sheer Lisztian virtuosity is called for in Jeux d'eau, Larderet provides it excellently, but he is more about the careful sculpting of Ravel's lines. The Sonatine is not the light work the title might suggest, and Larderet gives it its full weight. There may be more spectacular Ravel, but add in fine sound from Avie producer Martin Rust, recorded at the Alter Sendesaal Bremen, and one has a distinctive Ravel release that stimulates an appetite for the rest of Larderet's set.© James Manheim /TiVo

Horror Vacui is the debut solo offering from Finnish vocalist, composer, producer, and bandleader Selma Savolainen. She is a member of the award-winning jazz-vocal group Signe and the warped jazz-pop-indie band Mikko Sarvanne Garden. Appearing on Michael Janisch's Whirlwind Recordings label, this set showcases ten original compositions that wed Finnish folk tenets, modern jazz, and indie pop. Savolainen wrote and arranged eight of these tunes for her handpicked, all-star Finnish jazz sextet: clarinetist Max Zenger, trumpeter Tomi Nikku, pianist Toomas Keski-Säntti, bassist Eero Tikkanen, and drummer and Okko Saastamoinen. In addition are two covers of jazz standards that have informed the singer's musical career: Billy Strayhorn's A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" and Kurt Weill's and Ogden Nash's "Speak Low." Zenger shines on set-opener "Intense Ways to Recover." It begins like a vanguard chamber piece, with only the singer's dreamy alto and overdubbed clarinets. When the rhythm section enters, Savolainen shifts into a syncopated delivery that exists somewhere between Meredith Monk, Blossom Dearie, and Kate Bush. "So Loud" weds a low-register, left-hand piano progression to twinned, droning lines from the clarinetist and vocalist. By the end of the first verse, a rock rhythm momentarily asserts itself in the refrain as the trumpet and clarinet begin expanding the harmonic frame to introduce Nikku's resonant solo. "Subjects I" finds Savolainen vocalizing in wide-open terrain that simultaneously recalls Julie Tippetts and Lauren Newton, with scatted lines, dissonant swoops, and angular lyricism. The reading of Strayhorn's tune is rendered as an indie pop song, with an unusual time signature and transposed keys and cadences. Savolainen employs elliptical phrasing that actually recalls Annette Peacock's, even as her economical articulation of the lyrics is reverential and resonant. "Haunted" is a jazz ballad that exists in the same musical stratosphere as Michael Garrick and Norma Winstone's groundbreaking 1970 album The Heart Is a Lotus. The canny interplay between the singer and each of her instrumentalists is warm, immediate, and emotionally communicative. The reading of "Speak Low" retains its theatrical ground, while the band sways and swings around her disciplined articulation of the striking words. She reflects the tune's original presentation even as she stretches herself, while the band walks a tightrope between cabaret and modern jazz. "Days of Suffering" was co-composed with Keski-Säntti and showcases Savolainen's mature composition style. Her pop phrasing and harmonic blueprint meet syncopated, nearly angular post-bop with muted trumpets, contrapuntal interplay from clarinet and piano, and cascading drums that transforms the ballad into a dramatic, powerful processional. The closing track offers a gentler translation of the album title: It literally means "the horror of the void." Savolainen, Nikku, and Keski-Santti turn that notion outward. They embrace each melodic idea and allow the band's members equal access to one another and the singer, who vulnerably hovers and floats through the lyric melody. Horror Vacui is an assured, expertly rendered, forward-thinking collection by one of Finland's most visionary singers and composers and will hopefully expose her to a global jazz audience.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Robert Trevino’s first album together the Basque National Orchestra featuring orchestral works by the great French-Basque composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) received an excellent response. The programme in this second volume is perhaps more "French" in nature, but the Basque orchestra is giving dazzling performances of these works by their own national composer. While the first album was focused on some of Ravel’s most popular orchestral works, this album includes some "rarities", including Ma mère l’Oye in its complete ballet version, as well as one world premiere recording: Pierre Boulez’s orchestration of Ravel’s World War I era piano work, Frontispice. © Ondine

Against the backdrop of its decors, ballet offers itself up as a spectacle, arousing admiration and enchantment. In the early twentieth century, from the Palais Garnier to the Bolshoi, from the Châtelet to the Mariinsky, the shimmering colours of the orchestra were often combined with the innovative choreography of the Ballets Russes. The music to which these ballets were danced, assigned to illustrious composers, could hardly be for piano, which was tolerated only to accompany the dancers in their rehearsal studios. But is that really the case? If so, then why are there so many piano versions made by the composers themselves, alongside the orchestral ones? Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt answers that question here with dazzling imagination and virtuosity. © La Dolce Volta