hr-Sinfonieorchester

Anyone who invites the Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska will be met with beaming faces in the orchestra and the audience. And a concert programme that never comes off the peg. Here now: the jubilarian of the year Maurice Ravel in dialogue with the master of Polish modernism Witold Lutosławski. Maurice Ravel is represented with two of his most fast-paced works: ‘La valse’, this grimacing swan song to the Viennese waltz, which spirals into the abyss with great speed and intoxication. And with the Piano Concerto in G major, with its jazz stylistic elements, entirely in keeping with the fashion of the 1930s. This music is as breathless as the times, a non-stop chase. The hr-Sinfonieorchester's guest pianist is the Frenchman Bertrand Chamayou, whose DNA has included Ravel's music since his first days at the conservatory. Ravel himself was a regular guest in New York jazz clubs, and so Chamayou knows: This music should sound ‘like a great, ingenious improvisation’. Rigour yes, brittleness no, that is the ideal of the pianist, whose CD recordings of Ravel's complete piano works were described ten years ago as ‘his masterpiece’ (FonoForum) and ‘a sensation’ (Stereoplay). (hr-Sinfonieorchester)