Vincent Larderet: Ravel: Complete Works for Solo Piano Vol. 1
Avie Records

Included in the release booklet of Vincent Larderet's first volume of Maurice Ravel's solo piano works is a drawing of the French composer created when Larderet was twelve, a biographical detail that suggests he was destined to one day take on the ambitious project. Testifying further to that is the fact that the French pianist has dedicated many years to developing the deepest possible understanding of Ravel's music, that grasp soundly demonstrated in this inaugural chapter in the series.

It's not the first time he's recorded Ravel's music, however. After issuing the world-premiere recording of the 1912 Ravel piano version of the Suite from Daphnis et Chloé in 2014, Larderet determined that a two-CD presentation of the composer's material would be inadequate and so conceived the project as a comprehensive four-volume set featuring rare and even unpublished pieces alongside familiar ones. There are, of course, countless treatments of Ravel's piano music from which to choose, but arguing in Larderet's favour is his study of the personal scores of Vlado Perlemuter, which were annotated after the pianist's collaboration with Ravel during the late 1920s and include invaluable details about tempi, phrasing, and expression.

In his solo piano renditions of Valses nobles et sentimentales, Jeux d'eau, Pavane pour une infante défunte, Miroirs, and Sonatine, Larderet shows himself to be a commanding interpreter of the composer's music. His treatments are free of affectation yet not without personality; they're also nuanced but not timid. Clarity of expression and elegance of phrasing are paramount in performances that achieve a kind of unassuming grandeur with seeming ease. Intensity and understatement sit comfortably side-by-side in renderings that are suitably atmospheric. Larderet performs these pieces in humble service to the composer; at the same time, he recognizes that to truly honour Ravel he must impose himself upon the material with authority.

While some of the five movements that compose Miroirs (1904-05) are also familiar as standalones, hearing the work presented in full makes for a thoroughly satisfying beginning. With a title alluding to night moths, it's easy to visualize their dancing movements as “Noctuelles” unfolds. Anything but one-dimensional, the music oscillates between episodes of rapid flight and contemplative quietude, with Larderet effecting transitions fluidly. Ravel described “Oiseaux tristes” as “an evocation of birds lost in the torpor of a very dark forest in the hottest hours of summer,” and while there are drowsy moments there are also ones marked by animation. In a luminous rendition, Larderet amplifies the poetic dreaminess of “Une barque sur l'océan” and conjures the image of a boat gracefully buoyed by ocean waves. The as-popular “Alborada del gracioso” is given a suitably rousing run-through, with the pianist giving special attention to dynamic contrasts and melodic articulation. At the work's end, “La Vallée des cloches” convincingly evokes the sound of chiming bells in its multi-octave interlacing of chords.

In liner notes, Gérald Hugon states that Ravel aimed in Jeux d'eau (1901) “to establish a connection between the crystalline sonorities of the piano's higher register and the sounds of water, as well as between the piano's flowing lines and the movement of waves,” effects clearly realized in the writing and conveyed in Larderet's committed treatment. He expertly navigates through the eight sections of Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911), each one concise and distinguished by a distinct tone. His delicate handling of the “Assez lent. Avec une expression intense” and “Modéré” is beguiling, his “Vif” and “Moins vif” models of charm, and the “Épilogue. Lent” delivered with an enticing hush. The three-movement Sonatine (1903-05) might be, as Hugon deems it, “a rare foray into neoclassicism among Ravel's compositions,” but it's no less marked by the composer's personality. The entrancing “Modéré” has his fingerprints all over it, as do the gentle “Mouvement de menuet” and effervescent “Animé.” Though Ravel criticized his Pavane pour une Infante défunte (1899) for “the too glaring influence of Chabrier and the rather poor form,” the elegiac setting remains one of his most indelible and prettiest creations.

Earlier versions of some pieces can be found on other Larderet releases, namely Jeux d'eau and Pavane pour une infante défunte on 2014's Ravel: Orchestral & Virtuoso Piano and Valses nobles et sentimentales on a 2004 set alongside material by Schumann, Scriabin, and Prokofiev, but all such treatments seem now like test-runs for this multi-volume undertaking. Recorded at Alter Sendesaal, Bremen in April 2023, this seventy-two-minute first instalment definitely whets the appetite for the three set to follow.

May 2024