Also, Pavane pour une infante defunte; La Valse; Ma Mere l’Oye; Bolero.
Paavo Jarvi, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Telarc CD-80601.
The music of Maurice
Ravel is among the most poetic, imaginative, impressionistic ever written. It
has the capacity to touch one’s soul as well as stir one’s blood.
Unfortunately, while I found Telarc’s sound among the best afforded this
composer, Maestro Jarvi’s interpretations left me largely unmoved.
Things begin with
the Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2, which gets off to so quiet
a start I wondered if my equipment was faulty. Then I realized that the output
level of the disc was lower than usual, and I turned up the sound. Yet despite
Jarvi’s delicate touch and lyrical vision of the work, plus Telarc’s patented
big bass drum and deep low-end, none of the reading struck me as unusually
inspired so much as unusually slow. The Pavane
pour une infante defunte, on the other hand, appeared to move along at too
brisk and lighthearted a pace to convey as much of the piece’s solemnity as I
thought it deserved. I hear little of the radiance or sensuality in it that I
hear under some other conductors. Nevertheless, I can easily understand how
other listeners might find both the Pavane
and the Daphnis performances
sensitive and moving. La Valse fared
better for me, though, nicely capturing the baleful irony of Ravel’s
anti-waltz. I liked it a lot, and if it weren’t for the price of the disc, I
could recommend a purchase for just this piece.
However, I found
little joy in the Mother Goose songs
that followed La Valse, finding them
ofttimes more mundane than colorful; perhaps, however, this may have been a
result of my own overexposure to the tales rather than any obvious deficiencies
on Jarvi’s part. Then, the album concludes with the celebrated Bolero, likely Ravel’s most famous work.
Yet, here, too, I found things slightly lacking. Bolero should start
slowly and repeat itself as it builds in intensity. What I found was that since
Jarvi takes it at a healthy clip to begin with, the only thing it does is get
louder. Ravel recommended about seventeen minutes for the piece. The four or
five comparison discs I had on hand from Dutoit, Cluytens, Simon, and others,
took from fifteen to seventeen minutes each. Jarvi covers the ground in a
little over thirteen minutes, with a steadiness of rhythm that does no favors
to the music.
Although Jarvi’s
interpretations are earnest and occasionally elevated, with so much competition
on the shelf for my Ravel listening, I doubt that I shall be coming back too
often to the Cincinnati conductor in this material.
The major
compensating feature of the collection is Telarc’s sound, which is luxurious in
the extreme. The sonics are velvety smooth, well spread out, and nicely imaged,
with a bass response to shake the rafters. The Telarc engineers again produce a
recording worth listening to for the sake of its audio alone.
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:
JJP
