Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In a year that is overgenerously filled with composers’ anniversaries, Ravel might have run the risk of the 150th anniversary of his birth being neglected, if his music were not so popular. Many recordings can surely be expected before the year is out.A decade on from his win at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, Seong-Jin Cho is turning his attention to Ravel — and doing so in style. He starts with nothing less than the complete solo piano works and the two concertos will follow soon.This well-filled set includes all the major solo pieces together with trifles like the character pieces in the styles of Borodin and Chabrier, but not Ravel’s transcriptions of orchestral scores like La Valse, sometimes found elsewhere.We know that Ravel valued total fidelity to what he had written. Cho’s strength is that he keeps such a high standard of accuracy and clarity, down to the exact weighting of every chord even at speed, without sounding clinical or purely a virtuoso.There is always poetry here and grace, exceptionally so in the baroque elegance of Le Tombeau de Couperin. The Sonatine radiates luminescence. The Valses nobles et sentimentales dance with a lift to their rhythms. Among rival pianists one might find Bertrand Chamayou more pictorial in the splashing waters of Jeux d’eau or Martha Argerich getting Scarbo’s eyes to flash with evil, but returning to Seong-Jin Cho is a pleasure every time. Ravel playing of such perfection of detail does not come round often.★★★★☆‘Ravel: the Complete Solo Piano Works’ is released by DG
