Anima Eterna Brugge . Jos van Immerseel

It was best not to worry too much about the title. 'Pavane pour une infante défunte' (Pavane for a dead princess), one of Ravel's best-loved piano works, was given this title simply because it sounded so good. 'Don't dramatise it,' warned the composer, 'It's not a funeral dirge for a dead child, but an evocation of the pavane as it might be danced by a little princess in a painting by Velazquez'. In the orchestral version he made from the piano piece in 1910 he also has the melancholy sound charming and the dance rhythm bittersweet. This was for that matter not the only orchestral dance to make Ravel's name immortal: his fascinatingly hammering 'Boléro' and his imitation of a Viennese waltz, 'La Valse', can still captivate listeners today with their delightful orchestral sound. The restlessly tapping 'Rhapsodie espagnole' from 1908, in which the composer reveals his Spanish origins, also shows Ravel at his very best. The agreeably stammering piano concerto for the left hand - written in the thirties for Paul Wittgenstein, who was the brother of the renowned philosopher and had been mutilated in the war - in its turn demonstrates this French composer's piano bravura and audacity on the concert platform.