Ravel
Piano Concerto in G; Piano Concerto for the Left Hand; Don Quichotte à Dulcinée*; Deux mélodies hébrïaques*; Sainte* Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé*; Pavane pour une infante défunte
*Stéphane Degout (baritone), Cédric Tiberghien (piano); Les Siècles/François-Xavier Roth Harmonia Mundi HMM902612 71:09 mins
By any standards, this is the A Team, and they do not disappoint. Here is Ravel in all his passion and technical wizardry and, praise be, with no intrusive ‘interpretations’ to distress the ear: Ravel did say, ‘I don’t want to be interpreted, I just want to be played.’
Of course there need to be nuances to give the music life, and in the Cédric Tiberghien finds an ideal between rigour and imagination. In the two concertos, playing an 1892 Pleyel (the only possible grounds for the disapproval of the composer, who preferred Erards), he finds any number of colours amid his faultless technical grasp. As always, the sonority of Les Siècles is supremely clear, not
