À Moune

As demonstrated in the Sonata, Lina’s artistry covers a wide scale of tastes. With strong, decisive, full-blooded poetry, she remains fully in control throughout the first movement. The proof of the pudding, however, lies in the handling of the Blues. It took Ravel a long time to decide why and how to do it (the Sonata took him many years to complete), but it took Lina only a fraction of that to convince me that she and her piano partner, Pierre Goy, strummin’ the keys, had ‘it’. A fascinating translation of the blues into the realm of classical music.

There are of course alternative recordings for these pieces, but what you are acquiring here is a ‘concept album’ intended to take us back to the early decades of the 20th century and its atmosphere of musical exploration and discovery. In this regard this SACD hybrid recording is very effective, right down to the uneasy incomprehension met by the Sonata for violin and cello at its première. The programme deliberately moves from simpler music to this more substantial and demanding score, but with Ravel's “great genius, colourful harmonies, the perfect machine of his music and his amazing fantasy” alongside his 'muse’ in Hélène Jourdan-Mourhange, this is an out of the ordinary chamber music recording that is certainly worth anyone's time.

Of great interest for me is Bonet's election to use gut strings for violin and cello, as was customary at the time Ravel wrote these pieces. Also of interest, and not often heard, is Ravel's version of Tzigane written for a very unusual historical piano called a "luthéal piano." The luthéal piano is a prepared piano with registers of a harpsichord and a cymbal-like sound, and today is very rare. It provides a wonderful gypsy-like flavor that nicely suits Tzigane, making this a very unusual performance.

...this certainly makes this one of the more interesting recordings for violin and piano or cello, that I've heard this past year. And Bonet and her partners do not disappoint in their very engaging and delightful musicianship across the four works on this album. As you may imagine, Highly Recommended!