 |
|
Title: The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge Companions to Music)
ISBN: 0521648564
Author:
Publicate Date: 2000-08-28
Publish: 2000-08-28
List Price: $34.99
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Paperback
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $25.00
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $22.45
Amazon Merchant Price: $31.49
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: Exalted Orchestration of Ravel's Characteristic Melodic Structures Revealed
The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge Companions to Music)[[ASIN:B0002TKFHW
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe [Hybrid SACD]]] Boston Symphony, Charles Munch
A reveiw of The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, I've offered an accompanying and my most highly recommended recording of his penultimate composition. Without question the composer's most sumptuous score, encompassing the classical tale by Longus, his interpretation is in the gilded and light-filled style of Versailles, of The Hall of Mirrors, reflecting his own vision of it French Style rather than Grecian. In musical history, were he alive today, Ravel would quickly analyze its style as a tapestry of a processional in Grand Moderne Style of perhaps Jean Dupas of the period. It is vast musical frescoe or painted mural of Grecian figures imagined as Watteau or Fragonard paintings, not those of rustic pastoral Greece.
The Oxford Companion is a book intended for the early scholar becoming familiar with the composer's works; it is also an aide for the advanced, and for the totally immersed to refresh insight and review technicalities of works that one is hearing again. It is a much needed step by step accompaniement and appendix for Ravel's highly annotated musical scores, all of which are highly detailed within so the artist is completely sure of his interpretation within the rigidly confined and narrow limnits as Ravel wrote them. These restrictions, tempos observed, would rein in overly emoting renditions, eliminating any temptations to go beyond the intellectual crispness, reserving a dryness necessary to remove the the risk of sentimentality to these compositions. While described as 'impressionist', Ravel's compositions are in direct contrast to Debussy. While both achieve great colorism , Ravel's strophic structure is always as classically inspired as an Ionic Column, whereas Debussy's form is always openly astrophic and doesn't follow classic models at all.
This book is enjoyed most while listening to a composition so one can hear the book's meanings and justification. I offer here a CD from 1956, Daphnis and Chloe, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch conducting, with The New England Conservatory of Music Chorus under the baton of Robert Shaw. The author's view is that this performance remains the finest recording of this difficult score. It is a vast musical frescoe or mosaic, the most opulent pictue of a classical mise en scene. It's opulence has been achieved with the greatest of detail, including distant castenets, claves and the smallest inuendos written clearly in the score.
I highly recommend this outstanding Orchestra Music Companion to any new Ravel enthusiast, or the accomplished scholar.
|
|
|
|
|
