Ravel: Complete Works for Solo Piano
Walter Gieseking
EMI 7243 5 74793 2 5 [2 CDs: 117:42]
These 1954 Abbey Road recordings have languished too long in catalogue purgatory. One wonders why.
Gieseking’s Debussy has always held canonical status—EMI has kept those discs perpetually available, and rightly so. But his Ravel somehow slipped into semi-obscurity, surfacing occasionally in budget reissues before disappearing again. The neglect mystifies, because what we have here is pianism of such penetrating insight, such uncanny tonal refinement, that quibbles about the occasional technical smudge seem almost impertinent.
The “Menuet antique” announces Gieseking’s approach immediately: that characteristic pearl-drop tone, the pedaling so subtle you’d swear he’s creating an acoustic halo around each phrase. By the time we reach the Pavane pour une infante défunte—around 3:25, to be precise—he conjures a heavily pedaled wash that somehow doesn’t blur, doesn’t muddy, but instead ushers in the right-hand melody like stage lighting gradually illuminating a dancer. How does he do this? Two years of study with Karl Leimer, then nothing formal after that. His famous quip about talent and practice seems less like arrogance than simple observation.
Jeux d’eau flies by at breakneck speed. The River God isn’t just laughing—he’s cackling, nearly hysterical. Yes, the clarity suffers in places, passagework occasionally blurs into a shimmering wash where you’d prefer crystalline articulation. But Gieseking never studied to be a virtuoso in the Horowitz mold. His technical equipment served poetic ends, and when the fingers couldn’t quite execute what the imagination conceived… well, the imagination usually won the argument.
The Sonatine reveals his genius for architectural proportion. That second movement—stately, those bass notes staccato and ineffably wry—builds to a final page where he terraces the chords’ dynamics with such precision you can hear each layer settling into place. The flourish ending the “Animé” movement tosses off nonchalance itself.
Miroirs contains imperfections, certainly. “Une barque sur l’océan” rushes ahead too urgently for the thematic relationships to properly cohere. Those two glissandos in “La vallée des cloches” exist more in spirit than actuality—you sense them rather than hear them clearly. But set against these reservations the middle voices in “Oiseaux tristes,” perfectly graduated in their melancholy… or the repeated notes in “Alborada del gracioso,” quiet, fast, even, tremendously difficult to accomplish at that dynamic level. At 4:02 in “La vallée,” the tonal weight he achieves transfigures the music entirely.
Gaspard de la nuit finds him playing up contrasts almost theatrically. Around 5:30 in “Ondine” he conjures colouristic inflections from what seems a constricted dynamic range—except it isn’t constricted at all, merely compressed, intensified. The fast passages (too fast? probably) deploy copious pedal in service of something galvanizing and macabre. This isn’t “Gaspard” as virtuoso showpiece. It’s “Gaspard” as fever dream.
The Valses nobles et sentimentales caused bewilderment at their 1911 premiere. Gieseking has their full measure, bringing insouciant whimsy to the fourth waltz while maintaining coherent articulation in the rapid sixth—no mean feat when the tempo threatens to scatter into chaos. His rhythm breathes, his tone contains worlds.
Le Tombeau de Couperin suits him perfectly. The Prelude employs unusually light pedaling, sharpening the wit. The Fugue proceeds with softened tone and even production, though perhaps without quite the dynamic variety one might wish. No matter—the “Forlane” compensates with its clarity that never descends into bloodless artificiality, its contrasts that never feel calculated.
This isn’t the only way to play Ravel. Robert Casadesus brought greater Gallic reserve, Marcelle Meyer more aristocratic detachment. But during these performances, you’re convinced the music could go no other way. That’s the highest compliment one can pay.
The mono sound captures Gieseking’s tonal palette remarkably well—better, in fact, than some early stereo recordings managed. At budget price, this set belongs in any serious collection of French piano music.
The sovereignty remains undiminished.
Richard Dyer
