Grade: AIt’s a cliché that the best Spanish music was written by Frenchmen but it’s mostly true nonetheless, and here to prove the point is Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s a beaker full of the warm south; summer holiday music for these bleak, damp days. Hindoyan is a thinking conductor, not a showman, and in any case Debussy and Ravel have sensuality to spare. The RLPO responds with bouncing rhythmic precision, and acres of silk: a little like the classic postwar recordings by Ansermet, but played with immeasurably more finesse. ‘I have composed only one masterpiece,’ said Ravel, ‘Unfortunately, it contains no music.’ When Hindoyan twists the kaleidoscope, you’ll realise that he was pulling our legs.