Album: Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Pierre Boulez, Ravel: The Piano Concertos; Miroirs (Deutsche Grammophon)

These two musicians have worked together ever since their time with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, which helps explain the seamless union of soloist and orchestra on this album of Ravel's two Piano Concertos.

Originally written for Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost a limb in the First World War, the Concerto for the Left Hand stalks resolutely to a forbidding climax. The Piano Concerto in G major shares similarities of approach, but makes more explicit use of the jazz and modernist influences that provide the urban bustle, akin to Gershwin, in the first movement, before a more contemplative, Debussian tone takes over. Completing the disc is his series of short impressionist solos depicting birds, sea and landscape, Miroirs.

DOWNLOAD THIS Piano Concerto in G major; Oiseaux tristes