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Boulez, Debussy, Messiaen & Ravel: French Piano Rarities

Ralph van Raat (piano)

Awards:

Van Raat styles his excellent sequence as “rarities”, but it’s no idle sampling. Centrepiece is the premiere recording of an early, withheld and rather grand Boulez work, his Prélude, Toccata...

Boulez, Debussy, Messiaen & Ravel: French Piano Rarities

Ralph van Raat (piano)

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This release includes a digital booklet

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Awards:

Van Raat styles his excellent sequence as “rarities”, but it’s no idle sampling. Centrepiece is the premiere recording of an early, withheld and rather grand Boulez work, his Prélude, Toccata...

About

This album of French piano rarities features seldom-heard and recently discovered works by composers who had an influence on Pierre Boulez, as well as the premiere recording of Boulez’s Prélude, Toccata et Scherzo. This large-scale early work looks back on virtuosic Romantic music, while at the same time exploring the new compositional styles that Boulez would subsequently embrace. Among the rarities is a posthumously discovered piano study by Debussy, a reconstructed birdsong work by Messiaen, and a tiny masterpiece by Ravel found in a notebook.

Contents and tracklist

IV. Le cossyphe d'heuglin
Track length4:30
IX. Le moqueur polyglotte
Track length10:22
I. Prélude
Track length8:38
II. Toccata
Track length10:30
III. Scherzo
Track length7:54
No. 1, Fantasque - Modéré
Track length0:49
No. 2, Très vif
Track length0:25
No. 3, Assez lent
Track length0:51
No. 4, Rythmique
Track length0:34
No. 5, Doux et improvisé
Track length0:44
No. 6, Rapide
Track length0:28
No. 7, Hiératique
Track length1:01
No. 8, Modéré jusqu'à très vif
Track length0:45
No. 9, Lointain - Calme
Track length1:40
No. 10, Mécanique et très sec
Track length0:26
No. 11, Scintillant, faire ressortir le chant en sauts disjoints
Track length0:45
No. 12, Lent - Puissant et âpre
Track length1:36

Awards and reviews

  • The Times Records of the Year
    2020

7th June 2020

Van Raat styles his excellent sequence as “rarities”, but it’s no idle sampling. Centrepiece is the premiere recording of an early, withheld and rather grand Boulez work, his Prélude, Toccata et Scherzo (1944), cast in a far more traditional, indeed splashy and rhetorical, idiom than anything for which he would become known.

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