The Lorin Maazel/Cleveland partnership in the 1970s took the tradition of superb playing and chamber music discipline inculcated by Szell into repertoire areas other than the meat-and-potatoes classics favored by that great maestro. Maazel was the perfect conductor to lead this transition, being a talented baton technician with (like Szell) a reputation for emotional coolness whose best work nonetheless offers excitement and brilliance in abundance. Witness this recording of Daphnis. The opening consistently beguiles the ear as Maazel coaxes the music to life strand by strand with effortless mastery. The scenes in the pirates’ camp and the final bacchanal yield to no one in terms of sheer virtuosity and pulse-pounding pyrotechnics, while the textural clarity remains a thing of wonder: the “sunrise” sequence sounds especially luminous. It may not be the most sensual version around (for that, try Monteux or Munch), but the slight sense of detachment certainly serves Ravel’s stylized ancient Greek setting well, as does the tactile, excellently balanced recording. Ansermet’s Fauré, by contrast, offers nothing particularly special and he’s not nearly so well caught by the microphones, but it fills up the disc nicely and in the end it really doesn’t matter [the rating reflects this]. Maazel’s Daphnis belongs in every Ravel collection. It’s a joy.
