Ravel - Boléro

First performed in 1928 at the Paris Opera, Boléro was originally a ballet - commissioned by Ida Rubenstein. It's success at the premiere continued in the concert hall (though Ravel had predicted that orchestras would refuse to play it) - and much to the composer's surprise became his most popular work.

Boléro - the recorded wave file: very quiet to very loud

Boléro is basically one big crescendo, with the music consisting of two melodies, repeated, over an ostinato rhythm.

In previous posts I've featured records doing something different from normal to improve the sound quality - from 45rpm LPs to direct-cut discs. This record from the German company Tacet does something else.

Since an LP record revolves at a constant speed (at a constant angular velocity), the inner grooves pass under the stylus at a slower rate than the outer grooves. Every second of music at the outer grooves has much more "groove space" ("bandwidth")  than the inner grooves. Also the curvature of outer grooves is less. For the LP, it's a sad fact of life that the rousing - that is, loud - finales of many pieces of music are placed at the worst point of the record from a sound quality point of view. For this reason, the Tacet producers decided to cut the record from the inside out. Though the sleeve denotes it as "backwards", the record still spins the same way, but you lower the arm on the inner (normally runout) groove and the arm travels outwards to accommodate the increasing loudness in grooves ever better placed to take it. Click on the image of the back cover of the album below to read Tacet's explanation of this.

The wide dynamic range on this record means that it starts very, very quietly . . .

Cartridge: Ortofon Synergy GM SPU

Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession + Elevator EXP

Turntable: PTP Audio Solid12 + SME M2-12-r tonearm

Click to enlarge