Netherlands Radio Choir & Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra - Ravel: Daphnis Et Chloe (2015)

Maurice Ravel was commissioned to write a score based on the ancient Greek story of Daphnis and Chloe in 1909 by the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev. He decided to compose 'a huge musical fresco, concerned less with archaism than with faithfulness to the Greece of my dreams'. Daphnis et Chloé, which Stravinsky later described as 'not only Ravel's best work, but one of the most beautiful products of all French music', is here performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a team with the best possible credentials for realizing the full spectrum of this sumptuous music from the idyllic evocation of dawn in Lever du jour to the orgiastic Danse générale which closes the work. If Daphnis et Chloé is one of Ravel's most highly regarded works, his Pavane pour une infante défunte is one of the most popular. The brief piano piece from 1899 was orchestrated by the composer in 1910, while he was working on Daphnis. Its profound melancholy has caught the imagination of listeners ever since.