Ravel: Boléro / La Valse / Pavane pour une infante défunte / etc

Pierre Monteux as the ideal interpreter of Ravel, that great teaser and lover of mystification. Born less than a month apart in 1875, the two men were bound to come together in pre-war Paris, which was such fertile ground for artistic novelty. The 1914 war scattered the main actors of Parisian musical life. Like Ravel, Monteux was mobilised, then discharged. With no means of support in a dormant city, he followed Varèse and embarked for the United States, where he conducted French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and then in Boston from 1919 to 1924, at which point a musicians' strike forced him to resign and return to Europe, where he gradually made his way everywhere, particularly in Amsterdam. In 1964 he made what was to become his final recording with the LSO - a disc of Ravel's music for Philips of Boléro, La Valse and Ma mère l'Oye. Three years earler he recorded Pavane pour une infante défunte and Rapsodie espagnole for Decca. The performances reveal a perfect harmony of mind between conductor and composer; Monteux spoke Ravel's language in everyday life.