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

[Fred Catalano <ink280@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ravel, Bolero, Daphnis Et Chloe, La Valse, EMI Classics DVD, # 7243 4 92395
9 3. Orchestre De Paris, Jean Martinon, remastered from the original
analogue tapes, made in Holland.


Fred


> [Original Message]
> From: Russell W. Miller <rwm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
 > Date: 8/7/2003 11:36:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Bolero by Ravel the definitive version?
>
> > 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


--- Fred Catalano
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