Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé (complete ballet) / Pavane pour une infante défunte

Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé (complete ballet) / Pavane pour une infante défunte cover $35.00 Out of Stock
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MAURICE RAVEL
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé (complete ballet) / Pavane pour une infante défunte
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra & Netherlands Radio Choir, Yannick Nézet-Séguin

[ BIS SACD / Hybrid SACD ]

Release Date: Monday 2 March 2015

This item is currently out of stock. We expect to be able to supply it to you within 2 - 4 weeks from when you place your order.

Maurice Ravel was commissioned to write a score based on the ancient Greek story of Daphnis and Chloe in 1909 by the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev. He decided to compose 'a huge musical fresco, concerned less with archaism than with faithfulness to the Greece of my dreams'. Daphnis et Chloé, which Stravinsky later described as 'not only Ravel's best work, but one of the most beautiful products of all French music', is here performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a team with the best possible credentials for realizing the full spectrum of this sumptuous music - from the idyllic evocation of dawn in Lever du jour to the orgiastic Danse générale which closes the work. If Daphnis et Chloé is one of Ravel's most highly regarded works, his Pavane pour une infante défunte is one of the most popular. The brief piano piece from 1899 was orchestrated by the composer in 1910, while he was working on Daphnis. Its profound melancholy has caught the imagination of listeners ever since.

"The playing throughout is of the highest class, from the first horn's apparently relaxed top Fs … to the vibrato-free flutes that Ravel himself wrote for, the clarinets' piano playing in the furiously fast 'Danse generale', and the chorus's impeccable tuning in their a cappella section." (BBC Orchestral pick of the Month May 2015)

"Nézet-Séguin seems to have this music in his soul, and he unquestionably has it at his fingertips, with a secure hold on the drama, the unfolding of events and the ballet's cohesive span…the Netherlands Radio Choir add wordless halos to a characterful, involving interpretation." Gramophone

Tracks:

Daphnis et Chloé - Netherlands Radio Choir
Pavane pour une infante défunte