Ravel: The Complete Solo Piano Works

“Even before my teens, I was exposed to Ravel's music,” Seong-Jin Cho tells Apple Music Classical. “The first piece by Ravel I played, at my teacher's request, was ‘Alborada del Gracioso’ (from Miroirs). I was 11 or 12 years old, and previously, my repertoire had been mostly Classical or Romantic period music. Ravel was a new world for me—the writing and the musical language were totally different from Beethoven or Chopin. “It was also the most technically demanding piece that I'd ever done, so I have a very strong memory about the music. Since then, I've been learning lots of French music, including Debussy and Ravel, because I studied in Paris from 2012.” During his studies in the French capital, one Ravel work became particularly close to Cho’s heart. “The beginning of my Paris years was not so easy,” Cho remembers, “because it was my first experience of living abroad. And at that time, I learned Valses nobles et sentimentales, and whenever I play this piece, it brings back my memory of Paris. It's kind of nostalgic for me.” The bittersweet quality of those waltzes are a highly appropriate trigger for such memories. Not least, the final waltz of that collection recalls the earlier waltzes as if in a dreamlike state. It also, Cho points out, shows a quality very close to the great Classical Viennese composer, Mozart. “Like Mozart, Ravel proved that major music can sound very sad. That last piece is like a reminiscence of the past. And it's in a major key, but somehow it is not so happy.” So what did Paris teach Cho about Ravel? “When I was in Korea, aged 15 or 16 years old, I had thought Ravel's music is very free and virtuosic. But after studying in Paris, I realised that Ravel was quite strict in terms of writing and composing. I read that he really didn't like it if the pianist played too freely, ignoring his written instructions or tempo. You have to be very disciplined when playing his music.” Yet Cho’s performances are refreshing and far from predictable. The shimmering opening of Gaspard de la nuit’s “Ondine” is not rendered as a vague Impressionistic blur; rather, the alternation of repeated chords and notes are quite precisely yet evocatively played. On the other hand, the more straightforward Sonatine is not played as a neo-classical work, as so many other pianists make of it, but with a sensuality which recalls Debussy’s earlier masterpieces such as Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune or the orchestral Nocturnes. Yet, it turns out, this was not deliberate: “I don't know the normal approach to this music,” Cho says of the Sonatine. “Of course, Debussy and Ravel influenced each other and, although they’re different in the way they write music, they are both impressionistic composer. But I would say Ravel’s Sonatine has a very clear neo-classical form. Its first, second, and third movement is in a perfect sonata form. “Of course, Ravel offers so much in the way of imagination or ideas in his music, but the ideas are really clear, more clear than with Debussy's music. Ravel was, I think, more of a perfectionist in terms of writing. There are so many indications in his score—his tempo markings, for instance, are more clear than Debussy's. And the phrasing, and all the markings, are more precise.” Cho’s album presents all Ravel’s solo piano music in chronological order—a surprisingly unusual arrangement for such collections. One might expect from this to be able to hear some kind of stylistic evolution from the first piece, Sérénade grotesque (1893) through to the final work, Tombeau de Couperin (1917). However, as Cho explains, it’s not quite so straightforward: “Sérénade grotesque and Tombeau de Couperin are totally different as music. But Ravel was not like, for example, Scriabin. While Scriabin's early work was so influenced by Chopin, his late work sounds as if written by a totally different composer. But Ravel’s imagination, and his personality and style has been always there from his earliest published pieces. Yet he developed. If you listen to the Pavane pour une infante défunte, you can hear it's by Ravel, but you can also clearly hear that it was written by a younger composer than when he wrote Tombeau de Couperin or Valses nobles et sentimentales.” Ravel evidently found his distinctive style very early, and this remained more or less recognisable throughout his career—even when he clearly flagged which composers he took inspiration from, whether Schubert in Valses nobles et sentimentales, or the great French Baroque composer cited in Tombeau de Couperin. “But Ravel turned these elements into his own distinctive masterpieces,” insists Cho, “composed with his own musical language, which was incredible. You don’t listen to Valses nobles et sentimentales and instantly think ‘Oh, that was influenced by Schubert’. But if you look at the score carefully, you can find elements or ideas which suggest he was inspired by Liszt here, or by Schubert there. But it always sounds like Ravel.”