Maurice Ravel Volume Two - Artur Pizarro - HMV Choice

Artur Pizarro plays a Bluthner concert grand in this second and final instalment of Ravel's piano music, an instrument arguably closer to the sound Ravel would have expected from his favourite make, Erard. Listeners may well require a period of adjustment to its distinctive sonorities, which are generally more mellow and rounded than those of the conventional Steinway used in Volume 1.

Thereafter they will find much to admire and marvel at in Pizarro's playing - his delicately floated launching of the Sonatine, the springy athleticisim with which the Valses Nobles Et Sentimentales bound into being, the flickering brilliance and deft volleys of repeated notes in the Toccata concluding Le Tombeau De Couperin. Best known here is the Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte, which Pizarro rightly refuses to drool over, while amply distilling its qualities of poignancy and pearl-like beauty. Robert Andres' sleeve notes are unusually illuminating.