Bertrand Chamayou performs Ravel's complete works for solo piano

French pianist Bertrand Chamayou has loved Maurice Ravel's music almost as long as he's loved the piano itself, and it shows: "No one who loves French music or exquisite piano-playing," raved Gramophone about Chamayou's 2016 Ravel album, "will want to miss this." The same is even truer of this astonishing recital — performed 150 years to the day after Ravel's birth — at the Philharmonie de Paris, where Chamayou performs the complete set of Ravel's lushly textured, singularly harmonic works for solo piano. From repertoire staples like the virtuosic Gaspard de la nuit and evocative Miroirs to the elegiac Le Tombeau de Couperin and magnificent Sonatine, as well as lesser-known gems like the Menuets, every moment of this one-of-a-kind concert demonstrates what makes Ravel a figure amply worth celebrating 150 years later, and what elevates Chamayou's renditions into "revelatory performances of breathtaking beauty and incomparable power." After the concert, watch Chamayou talk more about Ravel's music in a fascinating episode of our exclusive podcast musicmakers!

Photo © Audoin Desforges