This brilliantly played new version of the complete Daphnis ballet starts with two very practical advantages over the outstanding version I have listed. Quite apart from having a generous coupling, which previously only EMI's mid-price reissue of the Martinon version has offered ((CD) CDM7 69566-2, 12/88), it is given the most detailed cueing plan that I have yet come across on CD. In addition to the 24 separate tracks, there are no fewer than 58 more cueing points for those with indexing facilities. DG have very intelligently used that to provide an extraordinarily detailed synopsis of the ballet in the accompanying leaflet closely related to the many dozens of cues. In that way the description of what is happening on stage is clearly identified every few seconds.
How different that consideration for the listener is, compared with the cavalier treatment from Decca and EMI of Dutoit and Previn (the latter—(CD) CDC7 47123-2, 11/85—was recently deleted), both of whom unbelievably have the whole ballet on a single track with no cueing facilities whatever. It was a complaint I made over the Dutoit in the very first month that CD appeared, but when the same issue reappeared in a boxed set, Decca had still done nothing about the tracking.
DG at least have learnt the lesson, and enjoyment is greatly enhanced. The quality of the LSO's playing is a tribute to the standards achieved by Abbado over his years as the orchestra's Music Director, with immaculate ensemble and transparent textures. Yet both the Dutoit and the Previn versions—the latter also with the LSO—convey much more Ravelian magic; the atmospheric warmth which cocoons you in sensuousness. Quite apart from Abbado taking a rather cooler view of Ravel than either Dutoit or Previn, it is largely a question of the recording.
The most celebrated passage of all provides an ideal illustration, the opening of ''Daybreak'' with its shimmering of woodwind. Where both the Dutoit and Previn versions translate you to the scene, and make you imagine real birds when over the dawn chorus of woodwind, the piccolo and flute enter with twitterings, the highlighting of those instruments on the DG recording has you simply visualizing two players in front of the main body. Even with dynamic range exceptionally wide—too wide, I imagine, for some—the very opening of the whole ballet (all but inaudible for the first 30 seconds or so) lacks mystery compared with the two rivals, immediately setting a pattern of sharp focus. With such refinement of sound and of playing, it is still a performance to delight in but I find myself not loving it as much as the other two.
With the Valses nobles et sentimentales the sharpness of focus in performance and recording is a more positive advantage. Again, it is not as sensuous a reading as some, rather one which consistently brings out the classical precision of Ravel's writing, as well as its rhythmic point. Plainly this is an issue to recommend strongly, but even now I hope that Decca and EMI will remaster their classic readings, and while they are about it add a make-weight or two. As it is, I pay tribute to the engineers in DG who, with a lot of hard work, have added enormously to the enjoyment to be had from this Abbado version.'