It’s commonplace among classical-music marketers to wait for anniversaries of composers’ births or deaths to release multiple renditions of their works.

Sometimes, though, windfalls occur irrespective of the calendar. And where the French composer Maurice Ravel is concerned, 2017 is turning out to be such a year, with two or more new recordings of several of his most enduring compositions having recently hit the digital-age equivalent of store shelves.

Two of these—Miroirs and Le tombeau de Couperin—can be found on Miroirs: Ravel Piano Works (Sony Classical), the fifth album by the German pianist Alexander Krichel. Not yet 30, Krichel acquits himself well on both, but it’s with the five-piece title suite that his sensitivity to the demands of the music and to the piano itself shines most brightly.

Make that “shimmers,” because the Miroirs only shine in iridescent flashes, like sunlight sparkling on flowing water. (Water is, of course, one kind of surface to which the term “mirrors” can refer.)

Not to be outdone, the 30-year-old American pianist Andrew Tyson performs Miroirs on his new album Ravel, Scriabin: Miroirs (Alpha), proving himself the equal of Krichel with an interpretation that differs mainly by proceeding at a slightly faster tempo.

Starker contrasts occur between Krichel’s Le tombeau de Couperin and that of the harpist Kateřina Englichová and the oboist Vilém Veverka on their new album Impressions: Ravel, Debussy, Sluka: Works for Oboe and Harp (Supraphon). Not only does the Czech duo omit the fugue (as Ravel himself did, along with the toccata, when he orchestrated the suite, originally composed for solo piano), but they also locate and heighten emotional nuances left dormant by piano-only renditions, even those as expressive as Krichel’s.

The oboe, for example, has a piercing quality that, especially hovering atop the crystalline delicacy of the harp, resists fading into the background in a way that the piano, no matter how crisply attacked, does not. And in the case of Le tombeau’s fourth (or fifth) movement—the minuet—the sharpness of Veverka’s oboe emphasizes the piquancy of memory and loss.

Dedicated to Jean Dreyfus, a casualty of World War I and the stepson of a woman whom Ravel practically regarded as his surrogate mother, the movement telescopes a wide range of emotions into its 4 minutes and 23 seconds. And it demonstrates the capacity of musical shorthand to function as a kind of nonverbal stream of consciousness.

Beginner’s opera

Actually, 2017 is somewhat significant as Ravel-related anniversaries go, marking the centennial of Ravel’s acceptance of the commission to compose the music for what would become the one-act opera L’enfant et les sortilèges. (He would not, however, begin work on it until three years later.)

The libretto, written by the French novelist Collette, dramatizes the coming of age of a “bad child” (enfant méchant) who, not unlike Toy Story’s Sid, finds himself marked for revenge by toys that he has abused.

And, as with all operas, one should see it as well as hear it.

But for those who know it well enough not to need the visuals, two new renditions commend themselves: Debussy: L’enfant prodigue/Ravel: L’enfant et les sortilèges/(Live) (Erato) by the Mikko Franck–conducted Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Ravel: Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 5 (SWR Classic) by the Stéphane Denève–conducted Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR.

The opera’s straightforward plot, phantasmagorical quality, and relative brevity (both new versions come in under 50 minutes) make it a useful introduction to opera for those convinced that they could never like the stuff. —A.O.