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Rating: The piano music of Ravel (along with that of Debussy) is certainly among the most fascinating and disconcerting one might have the chance to listen to. The use of a very extensive harmonic spectrum and the ingenious rhythmic solutions are its backbone.
A common denominator of these piano pieces is often being "undefined" in character, carrying with it a sense of mystery, unease, and sweet anxiety. The sensations they manage to evoke are extremely changing and mutable, following, so to speak, the rhythm of nature, water, and wind, more than the rhythm of the human affair.
And nature knows how to embrace you with the warm hug of its sun or bend your knees with glacial winds. You know those bittersweet and contrasting sensations of hot-cold, archived in the mind associated with vivid images full of emotional content, like snow and its respective fireplace, or the cold sea water dried on the skin by sun and wind on a summer afternoon? All of this and much more is what this music manages to evoke.
The complete piano works of Ravel are contained in just two CDs, and naturally include those great masterpieces such as “Gaspard de la nuit” and “Miroirs”, then “Le Tombeau de Couperin”, the “Sonatine”, “Valses nobles et sentimentales”, and individual pieces like the famous “Pavane pour une infante défunte” and “Jeux d'eau” as well as less known yet equally splendid pieces like “Sérénade grotesque” and “Menuet antique”. Very varied compositions, and also distant in time from each other, in which Ravel's harmonic genius explodes in its maximum splendor, and minimalism coexists with instrumental virtuosity.
Many great pianists have been excellent interpreters of this music, but my preference goes to the recent version by our own Michelangelo Carbonara, an exceptional pianist for sensitivity, touch, and dynamics, and a well-deserving winner of numerous awards in international piano competitions. Born in '79, his concert career began at six years old, and in '99 he became the youngest musician ever to graduate from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (also elected best graduate of the year). His reputation is steadily rising, with concerts always interesting for repertoire and originality of interpretation; his Scarlatti, to name one, is enlightening. Michelangelo Carbonara is truly a name to follow very closely!
And the great Ravel he gives us in these 2008 Brilliant recordings has a different image from usual: it's dry, sculpted, devoid of sentimentalism but imbued with calm emotion; there is evidently a very careful use of the resonant pedal... but what astonishes is also the scandalous perfection of the chosen tempos and attacks... This music is seen restored to its most authentic, "primordial" attire.
At the risk of being biased, I feel I can place these masterful interpretations on the same level as those, now legendary, of Debussy’s Preludes in the version by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.
A final note regards the very good audio quality of the recording and the absolutely unbeatable price: only 8 euros for a double CD of this high quality... when downloading is truly a crime!
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