RAVEL: The Complete Solo Piano Music – Steven Osborne, piano – Hyperion CDA67731/2 (2 CDs) 75:52, 67:05 [Distr. By Harmonia mundi] ****:
This British pianist joins the ranks of those select few–Gieseking, Casadesus, Perlemuter, Francois–who have traversed the complete keyboard music of Maurice Ravel, with its own applications of Liszt’s water pieces spliced to his ineffable classical precision within the “symbolist” or “impressionist” school of expression. Recorded in Henry Wood Hall, London between July and September 2010, the Ravel survey has the benefit of a particularly bright Steinway as recorded by David Hinitt.
Osborne opens with sonically resplendent version of the 1909 Gaspard de la Nuit, the three-movement suite after the poems of Aloysius Bertrand, in which fairy tale and grotesque fable intertwine in Lisztian colors. Osborne’s surface patina vibrates lovely in all three sections, though his totally languid approach to Le Gibet may cause a few minds to wander. But the outer movements—temptress Ondine and malevolent Scarbo–raise the level of Osborne’s virtuosity to opulent heights, cascades of chords and jarring intervals, especially Ravel’s favorite descending fourths. The passing allusions to Chabrier, Mussorgsky, and Balakirev we note well, the Spanish rhythms submerged in clusters of brilliant discords and impish eruptions of color.
The 1904 Sonatine owes its composition to a competition sponsored by the Weekly Critical Review, which designated entries should not exceed seventy-five bars. Short funds canceled the competition, but Ravel completed the Sonatine in 1905, a chaste and refined work whose last Anime movement alone should be played “without prudence or mercy.” Osborne manages a demure wash of sound, sensitive to those compressed nuances in which Ravel delights, as for example, his fingerprint descending fourth. Has anyone noted the number of Menuets–obvious or implied–in Ravel’s oeuvre? Elegant and stately, this from the Sonatine has a subtle life of its own, and even Heifetz liked to play a transcription for his edification. As requested, Osborne provides a shimmering toccata-style to the last movement, its staccati and flowing arpeggios alternate instantiations of clearest water. Of a more Mephistophelean temper is the 1920 transcription of La Valse, which I first heard for solo piano at the hands of Leonard Pennario. Percussion and persuasion blend perfectly in Osborne’s hazy and symphonic rendition, a sweeping series of grand gestures that. Like all of Ravel’s dance forms, collapses of its own obsolete weight.
The set of five pieces from 1905, Miroirs, next attract Osborne‘s expansive rendition. Appoggiaturas and mercurial crescendi mark the night moths (Noctuelles), though with Osborne they cast more phosphorescence than darkness. Sad Birds sit in the heat of a dark forest and sing with more or less enthusiasm. The sparkling waters supporting Une barque sur l’ocean gleam with an arpeggiated light we know from the canvasses of Turner. Alborada del gracioso has forever the Dinu Lipatti inscription, a portrait of a drunken buffoon on his arpeggiated guitar. Osborne casts a Spanish color–slightly jarring–rife with hints of Chabrier I its repeated notes, detached chords, and silky runs. The Valley of Bells fuses Liszt and Poe, though after all the scene is Paris. Osborne shades his pianissimos as much as his bright Steinway permits, especially if we recall Ravel favored the Erard’s drier tone and lighter action.
A pleasure to hear Osborne’s complete Le tombeau de Couperin, the suite francaise later
conceived as a testimonial to the honored dead of WW I. The second movement, a lithe fugue, represents Ravel’s sole contribution to the form. The Forlane, after Couperin’s own Concert royal example, maintains a slightly askew charm, though it rarely suggests anything sinister. Osborne attacks the Rigaudon with bold strokes, although the central section offers a resilient exoticism. The Menuet carries a staid elegance hard to describe, though something of the Mother Goose Suite naiveté clings to it. Its musette middle section tenderly rings with plainsong. The perfectly plastic realization of the gripping Toccata must disperse any notion of the composer’s sang froid persona, as even its Saint-Saens sensibility yields to the lure of poetic beauty.
Osborne follows with a series of miscellaneous keyboard works, of which his earliest compositions–the 1895 Menuet antique and Serenade grotesque–each competes for the title of Opus 1. A brief Menuet in C-sharp Minor precedes the Menuet antique, whose “oldness” comes from flattened modal cadences while its modernity lies in the harmony and rhythmically wayward two-bar phrase lengths. The little Serenade Grotesque–like many of Ravel’s early efforts–betrays its debts to Chabrier, whose abrasive musical persona captivated him, here in the call for pizzicatissimo chords. The eternal Liszt provides the impetus for Jeux d’eau (1901), a piece that can be a “sparkling divertissement” in the hands of a master colorist like Osborne. The 1913 Prelude was conceived–after his own song from Mallarme– as a sight-reading test-piece for a Paris Conservatoire jury.
Three pieces by Ravel are conceived “in the manner of” other composers, gently ironic homages that toy with those creators’ conceits in name and chromatic harmonic disposition. The purely “romantic” entry, the 1902 Pavane pour une infante defunte, does not suffer an overly slow tempo but rather proceeds with a dignified melancholy, Osborne’s leaning into the bass chords pesante, a foil to the singing line in the treble. The concluding set of Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911) offers Osborne in hard lines, percussive, ironic, the cross rhythms lilted and colored with a soft haze in spite of themselves. By the time we reach the Epilogue, we must concede that the cold demeanor Ravel may have worn has melted by way of a charmed interpreter gifted with the keyboard’s equivalent of lulling pastels.
–Gary Lemco
