Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin & Other Piano Works

Many pianists handle Ravel’s solo piano repertoire with tentativeness and delicacy, as if it is a Fabergé egg; not Yvonne Lefébure, whose aggressive articulation and cantering tempi give this Ravel recital the riveting feel of a mid-parabola egg toss on the verge of total splatter. The French pianist’s devil-may-care approach apparently caught the ear of the composer himself — though 23 years Ravel’s junior, the prodigious Lefébure crossed paths with him as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, later reporting that he complimented her interpretations as “corresponding to his own ideas.”