****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
It is unbelievable to find myself coming to this - Gavrilov's second reading of Gaspard - nearly 20 years after it was recorded. The brutally close recording of the companion Prokofiev pieces prompted the Gramophone reviewer to damn the disc as a whole, whereas in fact the Ravel is a perfectly decent studio recording. I have always known Gavrilov's EMI version of Gaspard, which is marred only in two ways: close miking that makes the climaxes overwhelming (why DO producers disdain a realistic acoustic?) and what to my untrained ear sounds like an edit in Ondine, when a particular note is oddly sharp and destroys the line at a point where you cannot help but find it jarring. Otherwise the shaping of Ondine's melody, the shimmering accompaniment and, crucially, the balance between the two hands are all perfect. The same positive qualities are in evidence on the DG remake without the shortcomings. It is a shame that DG have not kept the Ravel in the catalogue. The current competition is led by Benjamin Grosvenor's magnificent performance on his debut Decca CD, where it is coupled with the Chopin scherzi etc. The shimmering right-hand figuration at the start of Ondine is the best evocation of running water - more fluid (faster, less literal) than everyone else's, and the ambience (albeit of an empty hall) is realistic. By contrast the celebrated recordings by Argerich (her DG version), Thibaudet and Lortie all sound too close at the climaxes and the right hand too literal. Ondine sounds positively laboured in the hands of two modern players - Bavouzet (playing a 1901 Steinway) and Aimard. Berezovsky (currently deleted) is typically cool and brisk on Teldec, oh-so-magnificently played but, in Ondine, just a bit too swift. Sa Chen on Harmonia Mundi has one blemish in Ondine that in the studio would have been retaken but is beautifully recorded (live). Michelangeli's famous 1959 recording on BBC Legends has just been supplemented by what claims to be another live London performance from the following year - 1960 - on the Praga label. Keep checking online... New recordings include one from Anna Vinnitskaya and one from another striking looking female player called Inna Faliks on the MSR label coupled, fascinatingly, with a piano sonata by Boris Pasternak (yes, the writer) and what claims to be the 1913 version of Rachmaninov's Second Sonata (though it finishes like the Horowitz version, not live the live Cliburn, which also claims to be the original score). They keep coming - there are many more - but for now Grosvenor takes some beating.
