Symphoniker Hamburg / Sylvain Cambreling

Maurice Ravel was one of the most mysterious composers in a century certainly not lacking in mystery. Was he really an impressionist à la Debussy? Magician of sound would be a more appropriate description. In his »Valses nobles et sentimentales« he created in his own words »a set of waltzes in the style of Schubert«. And Ravel’s choreographic symphony about the shepherd Daphnis and the nymph Chloé, likewise first performed in 1912, is imbued with a shimmering, almost intangible mood somewhere between subtle eroticism and frenzied ecstasy. Then the First World War interrupted his career: Ravel came home with both his emotional equilibrium and his health compromised, and wrote his captivatingly dark Piano Concerto for the Left Hand for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the hostilities.