There can’t be too many world premiere recordings of a work by Maurice Ravel, but dynamic young American conductor Robert Treviño and the superb Basque National Orchestra have managed just that with the two-minute Frontispice which appears on the second volume of their survey of the composer’s works.

Written in 1918 for two pianos and five hands – and possibly intended for the pianola – Pierre Boulez orchestrated it in 1987 and it proves quite a revelation with Ravel in an atonal, experimental mood. It’s surprisingly dark, perhaps reflecting on the loss of life he saw in the Great War and a reflection on his mother’s recent death.

It’s not the only first on this magnificent album on the classy Finnish Ondine label. Shéhérazade, ouverture de féerie was Ravel’s first orchestral work, never published or played again in his lifetime after its premiere was eviscerated, one critic panning it as “a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian school (of Rimsky faked by a Debussyist who is anxious to equal Erik Satie)”. Ouch!

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