Word: ravelling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Mussorgsky-Ravel: Pictures from an Exhibition (Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy; Columbia). Big star of this one is neither Composer Mussorgsky nor Orchestrator Ravel but Conductor Ormandy and his incredibly polished crew; even the thickest Muscovite treacle is bearable when cut by these magnificent winds and brasses...
...Sylphides; in lavish productions with casts which regularly numbered several hundred, Nora and Istvan were only two of more than a dozen leading dancers, in Leningrad took leading roles only about four times a month. Many of the ballets for which they had been trained are now banned; Ravel's Bolero is "erotic," Stravinsky's Petrouchka is "decadent." Nora also likes to jitterbug, but when she tried it one night in a Budapest café, she was warned it might get her into trouble as too Western. Another long-frustrated ambition of Nora...
Other notable new records: Debussy and Ravel Quartets, played by the Budapest String Quartet (Columbia); Deep River and other songs, sung by William Warfield (Columbia); Smetana's symphonic cycle, My Fatherland, played by the Chicago Symphony conducted by Rafael Kubelik (Mercury, 2 LPs); Twelve Spanish Dances by Granados, played by Pianist José Echániz (Westminster...
...close last Tuesday with a program of unfamiliar music by well known composers as well as some often-heard works given new vitality by authentic and highly sensitive performances. French chansons by Lassus and Debussy provided some striking and not dissimilar harmonic colorings; and two selections by Ravel displayed a sophisticated yet exuberant treatment of folk-like parables...
...When he began to play a Mozart sonata, its contours were practically flawless, but the playing was so rigidly controlled that the effect was almost oppressive. Beethoven's Sonata Op. 110 was more relaxed, but it was only when he came to the impressionist music of Debussy and Ravel-billowing up tinted clouds of tone and lacing them with bright spiderwebs of melody-that Gieseking seemed at full ease at last. Probably no pianist in the world could have bettered him in those numbers...