The booklet­note to this recording consists of a touching homage from Valerie Tryon to her teacher Jacques Février‚ a close friend of Ravel and a noted interpreter of his music (those who know say that Février’s discs don’t give much idea of his true capabilities – recording made him nervous). Tryon on the other hand says she enjoys recording‚ and this disc for the most part marries that enjoyment with the things Février taught her: a singing tone with the tune clearly brought out‚ steady rhythms and‚ not least‚ a refusal to gloss over the awkward bits‚ of which‚ as she says‚ Ravel’s piano music has more than its share. There is much fine playing here. In Miroirs she gives ‘Noctuelles’ real character‚ her fingers fluttering and singing in all the right places; ‘Oiseaux tristes’ too is affecting‚ even if I’d have liked her to make more of the final ‘Encore plus lent’. Both the Pavane pour une Infante défunte and ‘Ondine’ benefit from her simple approach‚ which means not investing the music with spurious drama. She follows Février in playing the descending fourth at the start of the Sonatine as a setting of the word ‘Maman’‚ with the marked decrescendo‚ and indeed brings this out more strongly than he himself did in his complete Ravel recording on Adès (nla). But there are some things on this disc harder to accept. I suspect the absence of bars 6 and 7 from ‘Une barque sur l’océan’ was due to careless tape editing‚ but Tryon herself is responsible for other irregularities: in bars 12­19 of ‘La vallée des cloches’ (1'07"­1'51") she seriously unsettles the basic pulse before the long tune; in ‘Alborada del gracioso’ there is not enough difference in the central section between the lugubrious solo and the chordal interruptions (1'46"); and she does not maintain an unvarying a tempo in the finale of the Sonatine – the problem here is that she slows down at the start of the development (for which there is no authority – Février doesn’t) and the tempo never quite recovers. There are also rather too many off­beat accents that go unobserved‚ reducing the tensions within the regular framework. I wish‚ too‚ I liked the piano sound more. The middle is rather plummy‚ the top almost tinny‚ and the resonant acoustic does not allow for the important ‘sec’ chord that should set up the final paragraph of ‘Alborada’ (5'25"). So‚ although Tryon is never less than musical and her phrasing never less than intelligent‚ as a whole there is too much that is not quiteen place for this disc to be wholeheartedly recommended.