After collections devoted to Duparc, Fauré and Poulenc, pianist Malcolm Martineau adds Ravel to the surveys of French song he has curated for Signum, nicely timed for the composer’s 150th anniversary this year. As before, Martineau is partnered by a lineup of mostly British singers, who tackle the songs as if determined to demonstrate that this repertoire should never be seen as the exclusive preserve of Francophone artists.
The settings, 37 of them altogether, are arranged chronologically across the two discs, from the Ballade de la Reine Morte d’Aimer (Ballad of the Queen Killed by Love), which Ravel composed in 1893 when he was just 18 but already showing the fastidious ear for texture and colour that would characterise all his music, to the three settings that make up Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, originally commissioned for a film by Pabst starring the great Russian bass Chaliapin, but belatedly completed in 1934, three years before Ravel’s death.
