Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Perfect!
Comment: I find Maurice Ravel's music among the most unique and wonderful of the twentieth century. It marks the sublime marriage of pensive impressionism with--and many music scholars might disagree with me on this matter--a vibrant late-romanticism. There are few collections that highlight this grandness with as much clarity as this album.
The vividness of Ravel's orchestral coloring and the complexity of his polyphony can make the performance of any of his works a sizeable challenge for the finest of orchestras--the slightest miscalculation in dynamic, timing, or articulation can result in entire voices being lost in a mass of sound, but the Montreal Symphony do a flawless job. Also, Maestro Dutoit's interpretations are well-measured, reserved, and insightful, yet they do not strangle moments of Ravel's greatest sincerity. In other words, the recordings are, at times, passionate, luscious, and jubilant without being effusively so and can reach levels of deep introspection and even darkness without being morose or excessively brooding.
I don't think I've ever been as pleased with a collection of an artist's work. This would serve as a fantastic introduction to Ravel, although, admittedly, one is likely to judge all subsequent performances of any of the pieces contained herein based on it (i.e., the "nowhere to go but down" mentality). Still, one can always hope...
And frankly, at this price, one would be silly not buy it. :)
