Charles Munch, Boston Symphony Orchestra – Ravel: Daphnis And Chloe (Ultra Tape)

The complete ballet

Many listeners meet Daphnis et Chloé through Ravel's second suite. Here, Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform the complete ballet. Familiar passages regain their wider setting within a sequence of encounters, danger and reunion lasting almost an hour. The celebrated daybreak belongs to a much longer musical journey.

Recorded at Boston's Symphony Hall on January 23 and 24, 1955, the performance includes the New England Conservatory Chorus and Alumni Chorus. John Pfeiffer produced the sessions, with Leslie Chase engineering. The voices are part of this complete recording's performing forces, extending the possibilities of Ravel's orchestral writing.

Voices without a text

Ravel uses the chorus without sung words. Human voices become another colour within the large ensemble. Listen for the moments when they register as a separate group and the places where they merge with the instruments. No translation is needed: their contribution comes through entries, pitches, movement and the relationships between the parts.

Munch served as Boston's music director from 1949 to 1962 and worked extensively with French repertoire. This recording brings his relationship with the orchestra into contact with Ravel's varied instrumental resources. There are many opportunities to follow a single line before returning to the complete musical span. Transitions from quieter passages into more active dances offer particularly useful points of orientation.

An ancient story for the Ballets Russes

The source is the pastoral romance attributed to the ancient writer Longus. Ravel composed the music for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and the first performance took place in Paris in 1912. His description, “symphonie chorégraphique”, connects dance with a symphonic conception. That relationship helps explain how the score sustains a long musical narrative without requiring the listener to see a stage production.

“Lever du jour”, the pantomime and the final dance are familiar from the second suite. In the complete recording, the music leading towards them is present too. Their position within the whole changes how those recognised moments are approached.

This edition: Ultra Tape, and what you need to play it

Analogue Productions issues this recording in its Ultra Tape series: a ¼-inch analogue tape running at 15 ips with IEC equalisation, in two-track (half-track) stereo. Each copy is made in real time from a copy of the original analogue master tape, transferred on an ATR-modified Ampex machine with flux magnetic heads, and it arrives in a custom slipcase.

Playing it needs a reel-to-reel machine that runs at 15 ips and reads two tracks. The format leaves out the steps a record takes between master tape and groove, which is the reason collectors reach for it.

Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe

Musicians

Documented selection of participating musicians. Personnel may vary by track; this list does not claim to be complete.