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Maurice Ravel 1875–1937
III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.
Orchestral Music Compact Disc 1
62’10
1 2
Boléro (1928) La Valse (1919–20)
15’46 12’34
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Daphnis et Chloé Suite No.2 (1909–12) I. Lever du jour II. Pantomime III. Danse générale
17’11
3
Ma Mère l’Oye (complete ballet version) (1911) I. Prélude: Très lent II. Premier Tableau: Danse du rouet et scène III. Deuxième Tableau: Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant IV. Interlude V. Troisième Tableau: Les Entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête VI. Interlude VII. Quatrième Tableau: Petit Poucet VIII. Interlude IX. Cinquième Tableau: Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes X. Interlude XI. Sixième Tableau: Le Jardin féerique
29’59
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Daphnis et Chloé Suite No.1 (1909–12) I. Nocturne II. Interlude III. Danse guerrière
12’51
London Symphony Orchestra Louis Frémaux 4
2
Rapsodie espagnole (1907–08) I. Prélude à la nuit: Très modéré II. Malagueña: Assez vif III. Habanera: Assez lent et d’un rythme las IV. Feria: Assez animé
16’18
Compact Disc 2
68’13
1
Pavane pour une infante défunte (1910)
2
Valses nobles et sentimentales (1912) I. Modéré – très franc II. Assez lent – avec une expression intense
6’53 18’00
Modéré Assez animé Presque lent – dans un sentiment intime Assez vif Moins vif Epilogue: Lent
Minnesota Orchestra Stanisław Skrowaczewski 2010 Collins Classics (CD1: 1–3) 훿 2015 Brilliant Classics Licensed from Phoenix Music International Ltd (CD1: 1–3) & VOX, a division of SPJ Music Inc. (CD1: 4; CD2)
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Maurice Ravel: Orchestral Music Often bracketed together, somewhat unfairly, with his contemporary Claude Debussy, Ravel was one of the 20th-century French composers who emerged from the influence of Wagner to produce a specifically Gallic and Latin school of music. Unlike Debussy, Ravel was not a born-and-bred Parisian but came from the small town of Ciboure in the Pyrenees, close to the border into Spain, a country which would have a strong influence on his own music in works such as the Alborada, Rapsodie espagnole and the ever-popular Boléro. Although born in 1875, it was not long before Ravel moved up to the French capital, and by 1889 he was already enrolled at the Conservatoire where for six years he studied with Gabriel Fauré and began to develop his own personal style. It was the unconventional nature of his music that meant, like his predecessor Berlioz, he consistently failed to win the coveted stipendium and honour of the Prix de Rome (in 1901, 1902, 1903, and at the final attempt in 1905). Ravel gave up all ideas of entering for the prize and, undeterred, proceeded to create his own particular genre of music which would include much piano music, concertos, tone poems, chamber works, ballets, songs and two short operas. Ravel’s life story is, in effect, an uneventful one. He never married nor had any obvious major relationship with anyone, was a bit of a dandy in his dress sense and was considered both underweight and too short to join the military forces at the outbreak of the Great War. Instead he spent the period as an ambulance driver, unhappy that he could not contribute more than this and his music. He did not even manage to serve in this post beyond 1916, when he suffered a complete physical collapse which was worsened by the death of his mother shortly afterwards. Despite this, after the death of Debussy in 1918, he became France’s greatest living composer, although by this time he was finding it increasingly difficult to create new works. The last months of his life were plagued by a serious brain disease which left him unable to do anything; he submitted to a risky brain operation but never regained consciousness, dying in December 1937 in Paris. Of all his works, perhaps the greatest is the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, commissioned by the famed Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. The piece is one of the many great stage works that came to light under Diaghilev’s leadership of the exotic Ballets Russes and dates from the same period (it was composed between 1909 and 1912) as the notorious ballet The Rite of Spring, written for
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the company by Stravinsky. Indeed, during that period Ravel and Stravinsky became close friends, and it is tempting to seek the influence of each composer in the other’s works (although much of Daphnis is essentially a lyrical and somewhat sensual tone poem based on symphonic principles). The ballet falls into three parts and has a plot and choreography by the composer and by Mikhail Fokine, the Russian choreographer and dancer. Although Fokine was keen on a style based on the dancing seen on Greek antique vases, Ravel insisted on portraying the Greece of his own dreams, something rather more Romantic. The orchestral forces are large and in the original ballet included no fewer than 14 percussion instruments as well as a chorus. The symphonic nature of the work is highlighted by the fact that it has an overriding tonality of A major with the occasional stray into B major. Although by the time of the premiere Diaghilev had lost interest in the piece, its reception was generally a favourable one. Even though it is nowadays encountered mainly in the concert hall rather than the theatre, Daphnis et Chlóe is undoubtedly the finest of all French 20th-century ballets. The story concerns the courtship of the shepherd Daphnis and the beautiful Chloé on the Greek island of Lesbos. Daphnis has a somewhat unconvincing rival in the shepherd Dorcon, but his success is assured in a dancing competition which takes place between the two rivals. A gang of pirates arrive on the scene and abduct Chloé, leaving Daphnis distraught. He seeks the intervention of three nymphs to lead him to the great god Pan, who intervenes on the lovers’ behalf and puts the pirates to flight. The final section opens with the famous picture of Dawn, leading to a marvellous climax for voices and orchestra before the two lovers reunited fall into each others’ arms and a final wild dance and bacchanal rounds off the tale in a way that can perhaps be likened to the music of the contemporary Stravinsky. Ravel’s two ‘Spanish’ portraits in this orchestral survey consist of the obsessive Boléro and the four-part Rapsodie espagnole. While the Boléro was originally conceived in purely orchestral terms, the Rapsodie originated as a piano work. Boléro is the better known of the two and arose from a commission by the famous, sometimes indeed infamous dancer of the time, Ida Rubinstein – she originally wanted a ballet of orchestrations of piano pieces by the Spanish composer Albéniz, but Ravel obliged by giving her this 15-minute slow dance which rises to a shattering climax. The work has since found fame as accompaniment to ice skaters and as the sound track to various films. Rapsodie espagnole is a more substantial, four-part evocation of Spain consisting of a slow
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Prélude à la nuit followed by a Malagueña, a sultry Habanera and ending with the portrait of a Feria in a blaze of C major. Somewhat different dance forms can be found the choreographic La Valse. The piece was, once again, originally conceived as a piano piece in 1895, but Ravel’s later orchestration seems to mock the stylised old-fashionedness of the original. On the face of it, the work appears to be a companion piece to Boléro – it was even given a first choreographed performance by Ida Rubinstein’s troupe of dancers. But this is no straightforward evocation of a dance; Ravel sees his waltz through the terrors of the Great War. In fact it is a satire, on the old style of decadent Vienna and which sees that society whirling onwards to its own death throes; like Boléro, this waltz takes its one single idea to its own end. La Valse was first heard in December 1920, some two years after the close of hostilities. Ravel’s other major ballet, after Daphnis, is based on a collection of pieces based on children’s tales and grouped together under the title of Ma Mère l’Oye (or ‘Mother Goose’). The original concept was a series of piano pieces composed in 1908 that Ravel then orchestrated two years later, later adding some linking interludes and a Prelude. Ravel never married and had no children of his own, but he loved children and was fascinated by their world – a fascination also apparent in his opera L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. Ma Mère l’Oye consists of five tableaux, based on the famous fairy tales of Charles Perrault, and a final apotheosis. The tableaux variously describe a dance of spinning wheels, a pavane for the Sleeping Beauty, a conversation between Beauty and the Beast, the tale of little Tom Thumb and, finally, the Empress of the Pagodas. The concluding apotheosis describes the fairy garden. Less dramatic than Daphnis et Chloé, this is one of Ravel’s most appealing works. The Valses nobles et sentimentales were composed in 1911 as a set of waltzes, somewhat in the manner of Schubert, for the composer Louis Aubert, to whom they are dedicated. The orchestration was made, once again, for a ballet named Adélaïde, ou le langage des fleurs, created by the dancer Natasha Trouhanova. Ravel worked at speed and completed his orchestral version in the space of only two weeks in 1912. The waltzes are scored for a large orchestra which is used in a particularly sensitive way. There are eight waltzes in all, each treated as miniatures of only a minute or two in length, something of a distinct contrast to the neurosis of the waltzes in La Valse composed a decade later. 훿 Dr. David Doughty
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More Ravel on Brilliant Classics
Arrangements for wind quintet 94772
Complete Orchestral Works 6430 4CD
Complete works for piano duet 94176 2CD
Complete Mélodies 94743 2CD
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