DESCRIPTION:
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Malcom Sargent

From wikipedia:
Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) is a well-known piece written for solo piano by the French composer Maurice Ravel in 1899 when he was studying composition at the Conservatoire de Paris under Gabriel Fauré. Ravel also published an orchestrated version of the Pavane in 1910. A typical performance of the piece lasts between six and seven minutes.
Ravel described the piece as "an evocation of a pavane that a little princess might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish court".[1] The pavane was a slow processional dance that enjoyed great popularity in the courts of Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
This antique miniature is not meant to pay tribute to any particular princess from history, but rather expresses a nostalgic enthusiasm for Spanish customs and sensibilities, which Ravel shared with many of his contemporaries (most notably Debussy and Albéniz) and which is evident in some of his other works such as the Rapsodie espagnole and the Boléro.
Ravel dedicated the Pavane to his patron, the Princesse de Polignac. The Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes gave the first performance on April 5, 1902. The Pavane was warmly welcomed by the public, but received much more subdued reviews from Ravel's fellow musicians. Indeed, Ravel himself complained that it "lacked daring". Subsequent performances tended to be much too slow and plodding. In one instance, Ravel attended just such a performance, and afterward mentioned to the pianist that it was called "Pavane for a Dead Princess", not "Dead Pavane for a Princess".
When Ravel published his orchestrated version of the Pavane in 1910, he gave the lead melody to the horn, and specified a non-generic instrument: the score calls for "2 Cors simples en sol" (two hand-horns in G). The teaching of the valveless hand-horn had persisted longer in the Paris Conservatory than in other European centers; only in 1903 had the valve horn replaced it as the official horn of primary instruction.

The pavane, a slow, processional-like court dance, first gained popularity in 16th-century Italy, before making its way through the rest of Europe. Its name derived from "Pava" (the city of Padua in dialect), the dance remained popular throughout the century. Indeed, the stately character of a pavane is so suggestive of the Renaissance that it became a useful reference for composers wishing to evoke an earlier period. Camille Saint-Saëns thus wrote a pavane into his opera Etienne-Marcel and Ralph Vaughan Williams composed one for his "masque for dancing," Job. Maurice Ravel, a composer with a particular bent for delicate, refined atmosphere, wrote the "Pavane for a Dead Princess" in 1899, almost at the beginning of his career. Possibly it was inspired by his mother's descriptions of old church customs in Spain - she was of Basque ancestry. The music suggests a stately dance around the bier of a Spanish princess of long ago. Though the suave melody instantly attracts the ear, listen also to the figuration of the writing for the inner voices - the detached notes are carefully articulated to suggest the playing of a lute, a characteristic instrument of the Renaissance.

Pavane For A Dead Princess is a stately, delicate evocation, rendered especially poignant by Maurice Ravel's mastery of orchestration. He was but twenty four when he wrote it, in 1899, with a sense of form and melodic clarity far beyond his years. Later the wistful melody found new admirers as the 1939 popular song 'The Lamp Is Low'. French horn soloist Alan Civil joins John Curtis and his Orchestra in an excellent performance true to its origins.