Zimerman's way with the sultry solo theme that creeps in and Mr. Not that the performance lacks a jazzy touch. Zimerman's clean, spindly articulation of the whirling piano figurations emphasizes the clashing tonalities and makes the passage seem far more than decorative, even as the solo flute and, later, brassy trumpet dance blithely above it. From the opening measures, it's not Ravel's excitement over 1920's jazz but his bracing deployment of bitonal harmony (shades of Stravinsky's ''Petrouchka'') that comes through. Zimerman will make you forget such notions.

Ravel's Concerto in G has too easily been taken for a Gershwinesque work with brilliant piano writing and impishly clever orchestration, right from the crack-of-the-whip effect that gets the piece going. Three important releases on Deutsche Grammophon, the label with which he has been most closely associated of late, present Mr. But he continues his work in the recording studio. Now 74, he has understandably begun to cut back his conducting commitments. Boulez's development as a major musician of our time has been well documented on disk. Over the years, as he continued to explore the standard repertory, his performances took on a greater pliancy and warmth, qualities that were especially evident in two remarkable programs of Ravel and Debussy that he presented with the superb Cleveland Orchestra last month at Carnegie Hall.įortunately, Mr. Yet back then, the restraint in his interpretations could sometimes seem cool. During the next decade he also emerged as an orchestra conductor of probing insight and technical finesse, particularly in the French Impressionist repertory. BY the 1950's, Pierre Boulez's reputation as a cutting-edge modernist composer and imposing musical intellect was already secure.

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