Ravel: Ma Mère l’Oye; Mussorgsky/Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition

Belgian conductor Jos van Immerseel's Anima Eterna Brugge orchestra brings a period instruments approach to Ravel. Serge Koussevitzky, who commissioned the composer's 1922 orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, recorded the work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the most French-sounding of US orchestras, in 1930. Koussevitzky's is by some distance the more strongly characterised of the two versions. But the transparency of Immerseel's far less thrusting account is attractive, as is the delicacy of the instrumental colouring. Very often the impression is that Immerseel wants to let the music speak for itself. His light-touch style is, if anything, even more appealing in Ravel's Mother Goose. url.ie/p0n8