Worst looking CD/LP artwork

[Peter Power Pop]

I think it is just easy to make fun of, if you are in a mood to be snarky.

Boléro can be a mesmerising piece of music. Maybe people don't like being mesmerised.

[pjme]

LP artwork for the Bolero ... varies widely in quality. Some artwork will mesmerise immediately!

Madame Rubinstein is OK - she did commission the ballet.


However...be aware!




Even Maurice himself gets the garish colors treatment!

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

I didn't know Herbie did a BPO Bolero with EMI.

[JBS]

That deserves a 10.

[André]

It doesn't help that Ravel denigrated his own work:  I believe he called Bolero "orchestral tissue without music".  Anyway, to help nudge this thread back on track I'll present a few of my most disliked Bolero L.P. covers.



Scherchen's performance is novel in that he substitutes a tambour de Basque for the snare drum.  The sound is closer to the tomtom than the crisp sound of the snare drum.  I vaguely remember reading that Ravel composed Bolero with the (as the reviewer for High Fidelity put it) "bouncy" sound of the tambour de Basque in mind.  I believe Ravel's own recording of the work employs the snare drum, however.

Ravel didn't really denigrate Boléro. At first he was extremely satisfied with it, declaring that it was the only composition of his where he felt he had been able to fully realize his intentions. Before long it had taken the concert world by storm and it was played everywhere. The creature had run away from its creator. That's when Ravel changed his mind about the work. While audiences were ecstatic, critics were sometimes scathing. Nicolas Slonimsky wrote a book titled Lexicon of Musical Invective in which he quotes a critic who savaged Boléro. At that point, Ravel was in damage control mode, attempting to tone down the positive reactions on the one hand, and pre-empt attacks on the other.

He was also adamant about how it should be conducted, which didn't go down well with Toscanini and Mengelberg, for example. Some french conductors who programmed it insisted that Ravel himself conduct it, afraid of making mistakes. Clemens Kraus programmed the G major concerto and Boléro in Vienna, a concert attended by Ravel. The conductor was so nervous that, fearful of conducting it too fast, dragged the tempo and ended up enraging the composer. The soloist in the concerto, Marguerite Long, told Ravel: "That'll teach you, you are too demanding !"

[Ken B]

Although this album cover is posted elsewhere on this page above, I'm re-posting it as one of my most hated covers of any work.  I don't much care for the recording, either-- at least on L.P.  This was only my second Bolero L.P. purchase (Bernstein/NYP was my first).  I intensely disliked the woman's taunting expression, didn't understand the flaring match between her lips, and was uncomfortable at the implication that she was naked-- making purchase very awkward for a kid barely out of grade school.  As for the recording, it seemed to give equal prominence to every instrument in the orchestra, giving the impression that the orchestra was strung out across the stage in single file.  The tattoo of the trumpet was particularly objectionable, sounding front and center instead of at the back of the orchestra.  The recording lacked depth.  Finally I didn't like the very end of the work, which I felt overdid the dissonance -- a fault I find in many recordings -- thereby imposing a drag on what should be a shattering, inexorable conclusion.  My uneducated opinion, anyway

Dominatrix.

[Peter Power Pop]

Golly.

[springrite]

share pic online

For the curious this RCA CD from 2000 is still available and relatively cheap.  It has three complete recordings--Munch, Koussevitzky (1930), Mata-- and seven desecrations.  The Mata/Dallas Symphony is closest to my ideal.  The Fiedler/Boston Pops is a brutal abridgement, and the rest can go to hell.

Bolero hell was probably started by founding resident Tomita.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

This 1980 L.P. was issued as a cash grab in the wake of the success of the sleazy sex comedy, "10".

Agree about the LP release, I'm not sure I'd characterize the film "10" as sleazy. It had a clever plot, unlike the followup, "Bolero."

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

LP artwork for the Bolero ... varies widely in quality. Some artwork will mesmerise immediately!

Madame Rubinstein is OK - she did commission the ballet.

Oh, didn't know about that one. Maazel/Orchestre National de France/Columbia (Sony), same personnel as one of my favorite recordings of The Planets.

[Madiel]

He was also adamant about how it should be conducted, which didn't go down well with Toscanini and Mengelberg, for example. Some french conductors who programmed it insisted that Ravel himself conduct it, afraid of making mistakes. Clemens Kraus programmed the G major concerto and Boléro in Vienna, a concert attended by Ravel. The conductor was so nervous that, fearful of conducting it too fast, dragged the tempo and ended up enraging the composer. The soloist in the concerto, Marguerite Long, told Ravel: "That'll teach you, you are too demanding !"

The Nichols biography of Ravel conveys that he was pretty demanding for all of his pieces and extremely difficult to please. So it's not really a trait particular to Bolero, just that a particularly famous piece is going to be a prominent example of his finicky demands.

[The new erato]

[Peter Power Pop]

What?

[Madiel]

Awkward. They're holding musical instruments, but the tone is more like the viewer has stumbled across the hideout of somewhat drugged-up hippies who've grabbed the nearest thing to hand and are considering whether to try attacking you.

[SimonNZ]

Photographer: "Smile!"
Artists: "Don't fucking tell me what to do!"

[Ken B]

Awkward. They're holding musical instruments, but the tone is more like the viewer has stumbled across the hideout of somewhat drugged-up hippies who've grabbed the nearest thing to hand and are considering whether to try attacking you.

Fresh skin for the new drum head, fresh bone for the new recorder.

[Peter Power Pop]

Photographer: "Smile!"
Artists: "Don't fucking tell me what to do!"

Hehe.

They look more like an indie pop duo who have just discovered "world music".

They might want to call themselves The Miserableists. Or maybe The Downers.

[JBS]

Nominated for the thread because the photographer presents us with a one legged man (center) and a man with two left feet, each with a different sort of footwear (extreme right).
(The photograph despite these eccentricities is relevant to the opera's storyline.)

[Peter Power Pop]

Nominated for the thread because the photographer presents us with a one legged man (center) and a man with two left feet, each with a different sort of footwear (extreme right).
(The photograph despite these eccentricities is relevant to the opera's storyline.)

Yep.

[JBS]

This is pretty decent looking!



Too bad the blue Pacific shown in the photo is in Greece.

Found another picture of that vista.
Shipwreck Bay
Zakynthos.
Romantic sounding name, until you learn...

It seems the ship whose shipwreck gave its name to the bay was smuggling cigarettes and came to grief in the 1980s.