Bolero / Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloa / Pavane for a Dead Princess / La Valse / etc

Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine July 2004

"Having recently heard the Cincinnati orchestra perform at home in their vast Music Hall (seating 3400) I can vouch not only for the excellent musical health of Paavo Järvi's orchestra but also for the skill of Telarc's engineers in capturing them in such spectacular sound (try and hear it in surround - it's quite stunning!)."
(Gramophone)

This collection of well-known Ravel works is a wonderful addition to the recording legacy of Paavo Järvi and the CSO. Pavane for a Dead Princess was salon music written for the present and not posterity. Much to the composer's surprise, the work gained popularity and in 1910, 11 years after he first composed the work, Ravel orchestrated it. Boléro, undoubtedly Ravel's most well-known work, is an excellent example of two melodies repeating without variation. In describing his conception in Daphnis & Chloé, Ravel said "to compose a large fresco painting, less in keeping with antiquity than with the Greece of my dreams, which was more closely related to a Greece such as French artists had portrayed at the end of the 18th Century. Rounding out this recording is a bittersweet reminiscence of a world that had been destroyed by war, La Valse, contains every element of a J. Strauss waltz except its gaiety.

Also available on SACD: SACD60601