Re: [ARSCLIST] Bolero by Ravel the definitive version?

["Russell W. Miller" <rwm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
> [mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Steven Smolian
> The thing to watch for here beyond technical competence is to be sure the
> conducto holds tempo throughout the piece.  Many speed up near the end
> which, as I recall, Ravel specifically prohibits.
>
> This is the first I hear Ravel did not conduct the Polydor/Brunswick 78
> version.   He was in the studio as piano accomanist about the time these
> records were made.  If not Ravel, I'd guess it to be Albert Wolff, a fine
> but neglected conductor who was also active for the same company
> at the same
> time and with the same orchestra.

I, too, was unaware of any attribution issues with this particular Ravel
recording.  It's listed as authentic in Touzelet's discography, and there is
an eyewitness account of the session (but I don't have the reference handy
for this.)  According to this account it was Albert Wolff who rehearsed the
orchestra before Ravel made the recording.

Ravel chooses a slow tempo in his recording, as does Coppola.  Even in
Ravel's day there were conductors taking the music much faster than the
composer liked; on 78s these were the three-sided versions, such as
Koussevitzky's.  As I recall (but I don't have a copy of it here to check)
Paray's version is one of the fast ones.  For a recording in modern sound
that adopts a slow tempo like the composer's, I'd go for Skrowaczewski and
the Minnesota Orchestra on Vox, in excellent 1970s analog sound.

Russell