Ravel: Masks & Mirrors [CD]

This new recording from Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen follows Ravel across more than two decades, from the youthful Menuet antique to the wartime reflections of Le Tombeau de Couperin, revealing a composer whose voice remained unmistakably his own even as it evolved. Pohjonen explores Ravel's fascination with history, literature and illusion, as ancient dances are transformed through a modern harmonic language, fountains shimmer into life in Jeux d'eau, and Gaspard de la nuit pushes the piano to it's expressive and technical limits in three haunting musical visions inspired by Aloysius Bertrand. Recorded on a Bösendorfer concert grand at the Liszt-Zentrum Raiding, this is Pohjonen's second solo recording for Orchid Classics, following Visionaries of the Keyboard, and presents a portrait of Ravel that looks beyond impressionistic surface to reveal a composer of structural clarity, wit and emotional restraint