Customer Reviews

Bolero / Rhapsodie Espagnole

5 star:		(3)
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this is the greatest classical CD i have ever heard.
I love Debussy, Stravinsky, and Ravel, and this is an awesome
preformance by Eugene Ormandy.
I have listened to many other conductors of the same music
and they just don't possess the mysticism of this MASTERPIECE.

The audience is reduced to be a bunch of serpents and snakes in a pit and Ravel is the snake charmer. The audience has to be mesmerized and hypnotized by the music, by the flute, clarinet, bassoon, oboe, oboe d'amore, saxophone, strings and many others. The drums and the percussions are there to make the audience undulate, imposing a rhythm behind, over and beyond the melody, the simple musical line played over and over by all the other instruments in succession and together, make the audience undulate to the music, all of them coiled up on their tails, their heads swaying to the right and to the left, forward and backward. Hence the audience is swallowed up in some kind of obsession and obsessive domination that they come to like and desire in total abandon to the drowning flow of the music. A sudden modulation in E major introduces a break, a moment of relief maybe, of liberation maybe, but also a moment during which the audience may try to recapture control over themselves, but it is shortlived and the audience falls back into the loss of themselves in the music that drapes them in a straightjacket of pure enjoying of this total loss of control. And the piece crashes, and the audience crashes along with it in a resounding finale of percussions and strings, falling back onto the ground and breaking a few limbs at the same time. The levitation is over. The hypnosis is over. The audience find themselves crawling on the ground broken and beaten. It is a perfect composition showing how strong music can be when the composer dominates the orchestra and the composition so brilliantly. Note this piece of music is all the better when the instruments have deep and rich sonorities.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

Eugene Ormandy, Charles Munch and The Philadelphia Orchestra produce here unique sensitive readings of Ravel's Bolero,
Rhapsodie espagnole, Alborada del gracioso, and the Valses nobles et sentimentales. The stereo is stunning and the instruments are heard vividly in these complex orchestrations like no other CDs of these works I have heard. Although taped about 1960, the sound leaves nothing to be desired. These are fulfilling "new" readings of these orchestra showpieces. A real treaure in my music collection.