It is almost 40 years since the Nash Ensemble first made a recording of chamber works by Ravel. Comprising the Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute and string quartet, the Sonata for violin and cello, and the Piano Trio, it was set down in July 1986 for the CRD label, and is still in circulation. Four years later, the Ensemble made another recording of the Piano Trio, issued on Virgin Classics. Now they return to Ravel, on a disc including both the Introduction and Allegro and the Piano Trio, as well as the String Quartet, and (an added bonus) Ravel’s two-piano transcription of La Valse. Recorded at the Yehudi Menuhin School in April this year, it was the last project overseen by the Nash’s co-founder and artistic director Amelia Freedman (who died on 28 July), and is dedicated to her memory.

Earlier this year we welcomed the Nash Ensemble’s recording of chamber music by Debussy, including the three sonatas, the String Quartet, and a chamber transcription of the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune. This new Ravel disc further confirms their splendidly natural way with early-20th-century French repertoire. After its wistful pianissimo opening, the Introduction and Allegro bursts into life with harp arpeggios which create a quasi-orchestral feel which only grows as the music becomes more animated. Commissioned in 1905 by the piano and harp manufacturers Érard (in response to rival Pleyel’s commission of Debussy’s Danses sacrée et profane the previous year), the work is effectively a mini-concerto, with the harp part exquisitely realised here by Lucy Wakeford, combining luminous transparency with extraordinary agility and finesse. Remarkably, flautist Philippa Davies survives from the original 1986 line-up; the whole ensemble conjures up textures which look forward to the sumptuous ballet Daphnis et Chloé of eight years later.

In the four-movement Piano Trio of 1914, pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips is joined by violinist Benjamin Nabarro, and Adrian Brendel on cello. Here the textures, though not as opulent than in the Introduction and Allegro, are no less evocative or transparent. The opening movement has roots in Ravel’s native Basque Country, its rhythmic patterns derived from the zortzico dance. The brilliant second-movement scherzo takes its title from a Malaysian verse form, the pantoum, while its trio ingeniously superimposes the scherzo figuration over the broader theme given to the piano. Marked Très large, the third movement is a passacaglia, and its poignant mood (captured by a sombre but eloquent melody first heard on the cello) probably reflects the unease of the early months of World War I. The finale, by contrast, is a lively affair juxtaposing 5/4 and 7/4 time signatures to create a destabilised feeling before coming to an ecstatic close. This performance is minutely attuned to the music’s mercurial changes of mood, captured in thrillingly immediate sound.

Immersive, too, is the performance of La Valse (1920), in which Crawford-Philips is partnered by fellow-pianist Alasdair Beatson. Several recordings of this piano-duo version have proved how absorbing this transcription from Ravel’s large-scale orchestral score can be. Here, every whirl and swirl is relished, every nuance pitched to perfection, culminating in the headlong rush of the bacchic closing bars, with no pulling back at the close.

Closing this marvellous sesquicentennial to Ravel, the String Quartet of 1902–03 sees Nabarro and Brendel joined by violinist Jonathan Stone and viola player Lars Anders Tomter – the same players who performed the Debussy Quartet released last January. There are certainly Debussyan influences in this music, but also unmistakable thumbprints of the young Ravel’s own individual style, not least the pervasive wistfulness and sudden impassioned outbursts of the opening movement. The pizzicato passages of the second-movement scherzo have been variously attributed to the influence of Javanese gamelan and Spanish music; this performance combines lively rhythmic buoyancy with a feeling for the longer underlying trajectory, and a deftly arresting transition to the slower central trio. In the haunting slow movement, with its prominent roles for viola and first violin, the players maintain the long-term tension through the central climax to the gradual unwinding of the later pages. The finale positively bursts forth, bitingly incisive and gripping without descending into ugliness; Fauré thought this movement ‘stunted, badly balanced’, but Debussy begged Ravel not to change a single note, and the Nash Players’ fabulously keen-edged playing prove the latter quite right.

As well as being one of the most outstanding of many Ravel discs we’ve heard this anniversary year, this release serves as a wonderful tribute to the late Amelia Freedman, in repertoire that clearly meant a great deal to her, and in which this group has always excelled. The Nash Ensemble’s many fans will not want to be without it, for it combines essential Gallic flair and finesse with playing of thrilling immediacy. Warmly recommended!