Ravel: The Soubrette and the Magic Spell / Ma mère l'oye

Stéphane Denève has already presented a whole series of outstanding recordings with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, including Poulenc's complete Les biches or Ravel's outstanding works, including the opera L'heure espagnole. Now, to conclude the series of Ravel music spanning five albums, he presents Ravel's second opera L'enfant et les sortiléges; for this, he has invited a series of outstanding young singers who make this "lyrical fantasy" a great pleasure. Like in numerous of Ravel's orchestral works and in the first opera, this piece is also full of exuberant fantasy – be it the one already present in the libretto, or the one musically and instrumentally invested by Ravel. It is magical sound worlds that Ravel creates here, the surreal requirements of the libretto are answered by Ravel musically in a highly original way and with great stylistic freedom. A special inspiration for him was the "American operetta", the early form of the musical, which was slowly finding its way to Europe at that time. Ravel learned its style in the musical revues of the Parisian Varietés and was a fascinated listener of both the concerts salades of the pianist Jean Wiener with a colorful mixture of classical and modern music, as well as the first jazz bands, which appeared in Paris even before 1914 and were enthusiastically received by the French art scene. The opera is complemented by Ma mère l'oye, cinq pièces enfantines (originally a four-hand piano work that Ravel orchestrated for orchestra in 1911, before developing it into a ballet a year later, which can be heard on Vol. 2 (93.325)).