Ravel: Bolero; La Valse; etc. [Hybrid SACD] [Hybrid SACD - DSD]

Maurice Ravel (Composer), Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (Conductor), Minnesota Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Minnesota Orchestra
• Conductor: Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
• Composer: Maurice Ravel
• Audio CD (September 23, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Hybrid SACD - DSD
• Label: Mobile Fidelity Koch
• ASIN: B0000ADXG2
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #263,888 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Boléro, ballet for orchestra

2. Pavane pour une infante défunte, for piano (or orchestra)

3. Rhapsodie espagnole, for orchestra (or 2 pianos)

4. La valse, poème choréographique for orchestra

5. Daphnis et Chloé, suite No. 2 for orchestra

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ravel, Minnesota, Skrowaczewski: YES: Treasures from the Past, May 15, 2006

By 

Dan Fee "music fan aka drdanfee" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ravel: Bolero; La Valse; etc. [Hybrid SACD] (Audio CD)

Remember the brief, good old days of quad? Various labels, Vox included, were experimenting with ways to get four channel sound out of the long-playing vinyl platter. I believe the old USA RCA label had a discrete four channel system that actually cut four separate channels into the otherwise 2-sided LP groove. This meant you had to have a special cartridge/needle combo to safely ride and reproduce the four tracks cut into the groove. Never took off. Others, EMI and Vox among them choose the matrixed sound path, rather like the ways FM radio was matrixing a stereo signal into its carrier waves, so that your home receiver could decode it down to two channels in your home.

A complete set of the Ravel orchestral music was recorded in Minnesota with the era's music director, Stanislav Skrowaczewski. Like the golden era recordings of the old Mercury Golden Presence label, the engineers adopted a deliberate minimalist miking strategy. Once they found what they thought was the sweet spot, they just left the microphones alone, and let Ravel and the orchestra do the rest. Then we got these wonderful performances, highly lauded from the moment they hit the streets, on vinyl with four channels of matrixed sound. You could listen in regular stereo, or if you had the matrix decoder, get four.

Now we are really well into the surround sound era, thanks mainly to how home theater got all of us to finally upgrade our hardware. Since we already have the equipment for movies, and now for HD television; we have little reason not to let our music collections into the mix. And, voila. These master tapes revive, standing up to something like their original audible stature, thanks to the new high resolution Superaudio format. Pentatone is doing something similar to what Mobil Fidelity is doing here, with those almost forgotten quad master tapes; and what a nice surprise - the sound couldn't be better.

The Minnesota Orchestra of the era wasn't particularly known for its French tradition or influences as such. If anything, the Boston Symphony had inherited that crown prince designation when Koussevitsky arrived from Paris, bringing star French players with him. Then Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch helped maintain that legacy once the big K was gone. The Jean Martinon period in Chicago never really took root, and so as time passed, the Montreal Symphony and Charles Dutoit inherited the nomination for outstanding French orchestra outside of France. Nevertheless, these are utterly superb captures of a sophisticated Ravelian orchestral fabric - replete with finesse, sheen, silver - all polished to high gloss. This will remind one perhaps of the famous Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, reflecting light in all directions. And raising almost metaphysical questions of just what is real, and what is reflection, in the cross-hatch of all the refracted light.

Skrowaczewski knows well enough to let Ravel speak, without intruding. No mannerisms or oddities mar the music, either at the musical surfaces or in the melancholy or grotesque, subtle depths lurking beneath their polish. Tempos are consistently well chosen for the piece at hand. Some may at first hear the warhorse Bolero at too slow a pace, but comparison with the extant old version conducted by the composer in person would show that this slower, more languorous tempo is what Ravel himself adopted. There is still plenty of flash and fire in this Bolero, but also lots of that French intoxication with all things North African. Tourists are still going to far places to smoke kif and indulge in love-making with the local service industry that still knows where to find them.

Whatever you may think of French tourists smoking kif or the more hedonistic undergrounds in the North African tourist industry - As music: This is all simply marvelous to hear, especially in surround sound that finally yields up for our ears what has been sleeping on these old master tapes, all along.

Of course, this disc offers more than Bolero done with a slow, knowing hand that feels what it is reaching out to touch, namely, you. The Rhapsody, La Valse, Pavane, and Daphnis et Chloe suite no. 2 are the real point. Each of these works is simply so fine that they make Ravel's case as one of the acknowledged Great Composers of the West, all over again. What a felicity that Vox had the imagination and guts to go to Minneapolis, and get all this down, just when the other major labels had seemingly forgotten that Minnesota ever had a great orchestra. These Ravel performances will wear extremely well, no matter who else does them in surround sound and high resolution superaudio or dvd-audio. The only sad thing about this disc is when it inevitably ends, having played through. One could only have wished that Vox had been willing to get the full score of Daphnis from these sessions, the recording of the suites is so very finely done.

(You will find a second equally fine disc from these Minnesota sessions, also in surround sound superaudio from Mobile Fidelity. Plus, you can get their St. Louis sessions with Walter Susskind, which captured a very fine Smetana cycle of Ma Vlast, along with a rich and dramatic vision of Holst's Planets suite for large orchestra. Do not diss Susskind, by the way, because he was highly regarded by other musicians, including the likes of Ginette Niveau, Heifitz, Rubinstein, Milstein, Firkusny, Ricci, and Artur Schnabel. Nor is St. Louis confined to being a regional band: it is one of USA's oldest orchestras.)

Five stars. Is that enough? Hardly. This disc and its companion are simply among the true peaks in the mountain ranges of the history of recorded music. They may be equaled, but probably will never be bettered. Very highly recommended. Indeed.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing else even close!, June 13, 2005

By 

Bonefish - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ravel: Bolero; La Valse; etc. [Hybrid SACD] (Audio CD)

I know you already have 3 Boleros, but you haven't heard it until you get this one, to say nothing of La Valse and over an hour of other gorgeous Ravel. Flawless in every way: exciting, beautifully recorded and totally engaging.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo Mobile Fidelity!, September 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Ravel: Bolero; La Valse; etc. [Hybrid SACD] (Audio CD)

My God! So this is how Bolero should be heard :) A remarkable and tasteful debut into the universe of classical surround sound by a traditionally rock oriented audiophile leader. At times bombastic, ominous, and spine tingling. . . & for an Encore?