Few complete cycles of Ravel’s piano music include La valse and La parade. Both feature in François Dumont’s two-disc set; and if La parade’s high jinks come off less dazzlingly than in Alexandre Tharaud’s recording, La valse (its skeletal outline suitably elaborated) ends whipped into a truly apocalyptic violence. Elsewhere there is much to envy and admire in Dumont’s lucid and refined performances. He is ideally sensitive and accurate in ‘Le gibet’ (Gaspard) in a manner that would surely have won Ravel’s admiration. Cool, elegant and affectionate in the single Prélude, you will never catch him playing for effect, always respecting the composer’s wish that his music should be played rather than interpreted (his sights fixed on a Paris performance of Jeux d’eau by Horowitz, which he found ‘too Lisztian’). And if, paradoxically, you sometimes miss the mark of a more distinctive personality, you could say that Dumont plays in the best French tradition, remembering Ravel’s comment: ‘The Basques feel deeply but seldom show it.’ But, turning to playing of a very different cut and style, there is Alessandra Ammara’s single-disc selection (the rest is to follow) where her superfine pianism is complemented by an uncanny insight into Ravel’s outwardly teasing and enigmatic surface. She is scintillating and witty in the early Sérénade grotesque, where the composer declares his love of Spain in music of a distinctive rawness and edge. Few more magically evocative performances of the incomparable marinescape ‘Une barque sur l’océan’ (Miroirs) exist on record and, in the same suite, ‘Alborada’ is as bright and sparky as you could wish. Ammara’s ‘Ondine’ is a true ‘shimmer of harmony’ and in ‘Scarbo’ her tempo never obscures the waltz rhythm hovering beneath every whirlwind gesture. Hear her in the macabre chiming effect she achieves at 7'34", the start of an eerie sequence of ascents made hauntingly graphic, and you are clearly in the presence of a Ravelian as acute and individual as she is faithful to the score. I would not want to be without either but, of the two, Ammara is the more fascinating and personally engaging.