All three works on this inaugural disc in Ludovic Morlot’s complete cycle of Ravel’s orchestral works with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (OBC) began life as works for piano – solo in the case of Le tombeau de Couperin and the popular Pavane, piano duet for Ma Mère l’Oye. Ravel, as was his wont, later orchestrated all three. Or he almost did. When it came to Tombeau, composed between 1914 and 1917 in memory of friends killed in the First World War, Ravel only orchestrated four of the six movements, when he was commissioned by the Ballets Suédois. Ravel left out the two most pianistic of the pieces – the Fugue and the Toccata – and reordered them for his suite. Morlot here conducts Kenneth Hesketh’s 2013 orchestrations and restores the original ordering.

This isn’t the first time Hesketh’s orchestrations have been recorded: Sakari Oramo taped them with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2021. Hesketh imitates Ravel’s style well, using the same orchestral forces the composer employed in his four-movement suite (among earlier attempts, Zoltán Kocsis scored the Fugue for winds only, while his Toccata uses a much larger orchestra). Hesketh has the woodwinds curl their tendrils around the gentle strings in the Fugue, while the busy Toccata features deft but cutting brass interjections. Morlot balances textures smartly throughout (Oramo’s Stockholm recording is weightier but loses a little detail) and paces each movement well, bringing out the rhythmic bounce of French Baroque music to which Ravel was also paying homage.

There’s musicological interest in the recording of Ma Mère l’Oye too although, again, Morlot is not the first to record this edition. Revised under the direction of François Dru, published by the Ravel Edition in 2021, it essentially cleans up some of the errors and inconsistencies in the orchestral score. It was first performed by John Wilson and the BBC Scottish SO in May 2021 and Wilson subsequently recorded it with his Sinfonia of London. (The OBC booklet notes, incidentally, tell you none of this, but the Ravel Edition website is very useful.)

Morlot and Wilson are both stylish Ravelians. Their pacing is almost identical and – apart from Wilson’s more spacious (and magical) reading of ‘Le jardin féerique’ – there is little to choose between their accounts of this most tender and sublime of scores. The OBC are miked more closely in solos – listen to the strings in the Prélude (track 7, from 1'32") if you want to judge how intrusive you may find this – although it does bring out the contrabassoon’s moment in the spotlight in ‘Beauty and the Beast’. I find the OBC woodwinds a tad anonymous compared to the Sinfonia of London, but Morlot leads an enjoyable account that ends in a cascade of percussion glitter. The Pavane pour une infante défunte flows nicely – it’s no dirge – to close this pleasing disc.