Ravel: L’enfant et les sortileges, Nashville (CD)

“Ravel brilliantly balances raucous humor with heartfelt tenderness, and any production or recording needs to be able to convey both his caricatures and the sublime. This engaging account from Nashville successfully negotiates this balancing act.” — BBC Music Magazine

Setting a charming text by Colette, Ravel’s richly scored opera L’enfant et les sortileges (The Child and the Spells) is a lyric fantasy whose cast includes fairy tale characters, crockery, plants and little animals which come to life to chastise the child who has been tormenting them. However, all ends happily when the child learns compassion. Paired with L’enfant is his ravishing and enduringly popular song cycle, Shéhérazade.

Ravel L’enfant et les sortileges (The Child and the Spells)
Alastair Willis conductor
Julie Boulianne The Child
Geneviève Després The Mother (represented by a huge skirt), The Dragonfly, The Squirrel
Kirsten Gunlogson A Broken China Cup, A Shepherd, The Cat
Philippe Castagner The Teapot, The Little Old Man (represented by a torn arithmetic book), The Tree Frog
Ian Greenlaw The Grandfather Clock (broken by the child), The Cat
Kevin Short The Armchair, A Tree
Agathe Martel The Princess (torn out of a storybook), The Bat
Cassandre Prévost The Fire (in the fireplace), The Nightingale
Julie Cox The Shepherdess
Nashville Symphony Orchestra
Members of the Nashville Symphony Chorus
Members of the Chicago Symphony Chorus
Chattanooga Boys Choir
December 2006, Laura Turner Concert Hall, Nashville

Ravel Shéhérazade
Alastair Willis conductor
Julie Boulianne mezzo-soprano
Nashville Symphony Orchestra
June 2007, Laura Turner Concert Hall, Nashville

Discs: 1
Record Label: Naxos
Release Date: March 2, 2009