In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s the Ansermet legend always struck me as being just that—for his sense of style and the quality of the orchestral response was never greatly superior to contemporaries like Cluytens, Martinon or Munch. True, the Suisse Romande Orchestra do make an individual sound but the winds never really blend. All the same there are good things in this Ravel compilation and in comparing, say, the Valses nobles with the last LP incarnation (Decca ECS815, 4/78—nla) one is impressed yet again by the excellence of the digital remastering and the superb sound quality achieved by the Decca engineers of the 1960s. I have sampled the transfer of Bolero alongside its last LP issue (Decca Jubilee JB36, 8/78) where it is coupled with Honegger's Pacific 231 and L'apprenti sorcier. As one might expect, there is greater range and colour in the CD version, a cleaner focus and greater transparency of texture.
The playing is eminently acceptable, and a good deal better, I would say, than in some other Ansermet recordings of that vintage (the Roussel symphonies, for example). However, impressive though it is technically, I would certainly not consider the claims superior to those of the excellently recorded Ravel discs we have recently had from Decca by the Montreal orchestra under Charles Dutoit, which are equal in price. In the Alborada del gracioso, the orchestral playing from Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (410 010-2DH, 8/83) is infinitely more subtle and nuances of colour and dynamics scrupulously placed.'