Basque National Orchestra

Basque National Orchestra & Robert Trevino – Ravel: Orchestral Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:39 minutes | 590 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ondine

Conductor Robert Trevino’s new album on Ondine – after a successful debut with a complete Beethoven symphony cycle – features six orchestral pieces by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), one of the most famous Basque composers, played by the Basque National Orchestra. Born in a small town in France very close to the Spanish border, Ravel spent most of his life in Paris. However, he was extremely proud of his Basque background having absorbed himself to the culture already as a child, and many elements of Basque music can be found in his compositions. In this release, we can finally hear Ravel’s orchestral music being interpreted by Basque musicians in the form of the Basque National Orchestra. These performances on some of the most fantastic orchestral scores of the 20th Century also shed light to the Basque influences in Ravel’s music.

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Basque National Orchestra, Robert Trevino – Ravel: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:06 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Ondine

Robert Trevino’s first album together the Basque National Orchestra featuring orchestral works by the great French-Basque composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) received an excellent response. The program in this second volume is perhaps more ‘French’ in nature, but the Basque orchestra is giving dazzling performances of these works by their own national composer. While the first album was focused on some of Ravel’s most popular orchestral works, this album includes some rarities, including Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) in it’s complete ballet version, as well as one world premiere recording: Pierre Boulez’s orchestration of Ravel’s World War I era piano work, Frontispice.
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Basque National Orchestra, Robert Trevino – Americascapes (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:06 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Ondine

All four American composers on this new album by the Basque National Orchestra and conductor Robert Trevino wrote music that was known, played and esteemed during their lifetimes, but none of them ever had a huge “hit” and so the pieces here are likely familiar only to musical scholars. Yet while it is uncommon enough to find Charles Martin Loeffler, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles and Howard Hanson sharing the same album, the conductor Robert Trevino has taken his exploration still further, into the recesses of their repertory – complete with a Hanson piece, Before the Dawn, that has had to wait a century for this, its premiere recording.
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