Music and Vinyl: Ravel - String Quartet

Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F was premiered in Paris in March 1904. Modelled on Debussy's quartet composed some ten years earlier it was dedicated to Ravel's teacher Gabriel Fauré who didn't look too favourably on it, declaring the finale "stunted, badly balanced, in fact a failure". Debussy however wrote to Ravel saying "In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet".

Debussy's assessment was more perceptive than Fauré's however, as the work has become a standard in the chamber music repertoire. This 1970 recording is represented here in a compilation of other chamber music from Ravel (though originally coupled with the Debussy Quartet) and notes on it can be read by enlarging the scans below, and looking here.