What’s the best complete set of Ravel’s piano music?

Is it




or





?

That’s one tough call.

At the beginning of the year I picked up Abbey Simon’s 1970s Vox recordings of Ravel’s solo piano music and was simply amazed. I’d tried Simon’s Chopin before, and while it’s good, it simply didn’t prepare me for his Ravel. I was used to a certain, almost straight-laced approach and sound to Ravel, even from the great Walter Gieseking. Simon is pretty much as un-straight-laced as can be. Everywhere and always he manipulates tempi and plays with such subtle dynamic shading that one cannot possibly hear everything in the first twenty hearings. His flexibility and re-creative freedom is simply a marvel. Every work is rendered fresh and new. His Gaspard de la nuit is dashed off with a virtuosic arrogance that hides the virtuosity. He plays brief passages of Scarbo in a blocky fashion, not because he’s challenged, but because he’s not challenged enough. He tears into the piano version of La Valse with control and panache and a color palette most pianists can’t touch. Every other work, from the dazzling, appropriately sparkling Jeux d’eau to the serenely elegiac Pavane pour une infante défunte are mezmerizingly played. Surely, though, the crown jewel in Simon’s set is his titanic reading of Miroirs. Never have I heard such fluidity and grace and swelling magnificence in Une barque sur L’océan, or rhythmic flexibility and solidity in Alborado del gracioso. Combine Simon’s playing with superb analog sound that allows his amazing color palate through in a way his Chopin recordings do not, and one has a treat of immense proportions. An amazing, miraculous set!

I was sated. Such a great recording of Ravel’s piano music should suffice not just for a year, but for many years. But then I picked up Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s recording on MDG. His achievement is on the same level, yet is quite different. The set opens with a Gaspard nearly the equal of Simon’s, which is to say it’s an extraordinary one. Le Gibet, in particular, is haunting, and Scarbo mischievous and delivered in astonishing fashion. From Miroirs, Oiseaux tristes deserves special mention, opening as it does in a most wondrous subdued manner and unfolding in a most natural and graceful way. The small works all fare extraordinarily well, but Bavouzet delivers perhaps the best versions I’ve heard of both Valses nobles et sentimales and Le Tombeau de Couperin. The Valses all sound absolutely magnificent: they have a gracefulness and effortless and flow that eludes other versions, which may even sound crude in comparison. Le Tombeau is perhaps more impressive. The three dance movements have the same effortlessness and gracefulness, and they posses a lightness and beauty and deep frivolity that simply amazes. (Yes, deep frivolity.) The more “serious” movements are so meticulously played that one can do nothing other than sit and listen in utter amazement. Mr Bavouzet’s technique is superb, his touch varied, colorful, and insightful. (I simply must hear his Debussy!) As to sound, well, I’ve read that Michelangeli once said something to the effect that no piano is good enough for Gaspard de la nuit. If he had lived to hear this recording, he may very well change his mind. The 1901 Steinway D sounds stunning, and the recording is beyond Audiophile perfect in every way. Another amazing, miraculous set!

Of course my opening question is rhetorical. I love both these sets, but I cannot live without either Walter Gieseking or, especially, Robert Casadesus in this repertoire. And of course there are other superb recordings of individual works, but these two sets are both special. The Bavouzet, in particular, offers something special. Here is proof that great pianism is not only not dead, it’s thriving, if only one looks around a bit.


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