Gielen’s is an easygoing La Mer, one with calm seas rather than storm surges. Even the Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea comes across as polite conversation rather than the heated argument staged by Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra, or the shouting match of Munch and the Boston Symphony. This relaxed atmosphere does allow some beautiful sonorities and delicate shadings to emerge from the texture, as well some unusual details, such as the brief, rapid trumpet fanfares in the closing passages. Nice, but not really competitive.
Skrowaczewski’s Ravel is another matter. His Daphnis & Chloe suites are wonderfully evocative of the magical world Ravel creates in his score, so much so that you wish Vox had made a complete recording instead of these extracts. What we do have is marvelous playing by the Minnesota Orchestra, beguiling singing by the St. Olaf Choir (with especially audible inner detail in the men’s parts), and probing conducting by Skrowaczewski, who paints the music’s colors in broad, vibrant strokes. Une Barque sur l’Ocean makes for a pleasing if brief filler. Sound on both recordings is full-bodied, with the early digital Cincinnati sessions exhibiting a slight touch of glare.
