IDAGIO | Miroirs - Ravel Piano Works 886446086743

Featuring

Alexander Krichel
Maurice Ravel

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Notable Performances

The first performance of Le Tombeau de Couperin was given in April 1919 in Paris's Salle Gaveau by the legendary pianist Marguerite Long, who was a friend of Ravel, Debussy, and Fauré.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Ravel considered 'Oiseaux tristes' from Miroirs to be the most characteristic piece, evoking 'birds lost in the torpor of a very sombre forest, during the hottest hours of summertime'.

Composition History

Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, dating from 1908, was inspired by three prose poems by the French Romantic poet Aloysius Bertrand, who was an enthusiastic reader of E.T.A. Hoffmann.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Maurice Ravel, like Debussy, was drawn to the elegant taste and sound world of 18th-century French music, particularly that of his compatriots.

Composition History

Ravel dedicated each movement of Le Tombeau de Couperin to a friend who had fallen in World War I, including the musicologist Joseph de Marliave.

Composition History

Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, a piano suite, is a 'tombeau' – a musical monument to admired figures – but it was not intended to mourn François Couperin, a leading claveciniste and organist at the Versailles court.

Compositional Technique

Ravel's Miroirs, composed in 1904/05, represents his first extensive engagement with musical Impressionism, building on sonorities he explored in his earlier piece, Jeux d'eau.