GRAMOPHONE Review: Ravel Cantates pour le Prix de Rome – Choeur & Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Rophé

What a delicious surprise this has turned out to be. I’ll wager only a tiny minority of true Ravel aficionados will know only one or two if any of these early opuses – all of them written expressly for the prestigious Prix de Rome which for reasons best known to successive juries Ravel never won. That might speak to his rebellious spirit, his thirst for experimentation, or simply his desire to transcend technical know-how and embrace the emergence of his true spirit.

But what is beyond doubt in the three cantatas and handful of elaborated choruses presented here is his supremely affecting way with the voice above and beyond his already considerable orchestral skills. Alyssa – the first and least ambitious of these mythological fancies – demonstrates at once how free and effortless and seductive his natural gifts were. The tone is lush and spontaneous – Daphnis et Chloé waiting to happen in the orchestra – as our hero, the Irish warrior Braïsyl, cavorts with elves and fairies in search of his elusive (and illicit, for she is not mortal) first love, Alyssa. Tenor Julien Behr – one of an outstanding group of singers featured here (three per cantata, shrewdly cast) – is all lusty rapture throughout his long opening invocation and, fairy or not, the glorious Veronique Gens is not about to evaporate into the mists of mythology without first tormenting out hero with her delicious vocal effusions. If it isn’t Prix de Rome worthy it is undeniably gorgeous for its brief shining duration.

Alcyone offers greater scope by introducing nature and the elements into the equation. Queen Alcyone has seen the future and in it her husband’s ship is to sink in a storm and consign him to the depths from which he will forever be calling her name. The proximity of Debussy’s Pelleas (premiered in the same year 1902) urges greater harmonic complexity from Ravel and the novelty of a Description Symphonique turns Ravel’s orchestra into the main protagonist. Marvellous melding of two female voices too, soprano and mezzo, as Sophie Koch and Janina Baechle as queen and confidante confront the darkening premonition. There’s a brief waltzing ‘golden age’ trio, too, as the King joins in spirit. Very Straussian.

But the weightiest and most eye-watering of the three big pieces (overlooked perhaps because it was so un-Ravelian) is Myrrha (1839) after Byron. Orientalism looms large here, as does Wagner and his French disciples Massenet, Saint-Saens and Charpentier. And the vocal writing now has more of a through-composed declamatory feel with Michael Spyres and Vannina Santoni rising most thrillingly to the rapture of it all.

Pascal Rophé and the Choeur et Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire make this whole disc a thoroughly authentic (and beautifully engineered) affair and when it comes to the miniature choral settings (the polyphony full but limpid, too, elegant and graceful) their juxtaposition highlights their distinctions. L’Aurore is possessed of a fragrance suggestive of Shehérézade, Les Bayaderes does what it says on the tin (Bizet is lurking close by), and La Nuit is headier and goes deeper.

Absolutely fascinating, then, and always seductive. Resistance is futile.