Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 08/22/2006, uploaded on 01/09/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In 1900, Maurice Ravel joined a group of young, like-minded musicians, artists and writer called Les Apaches. The group met regularly at the homes of Paul Sordes and Tristan Klingsor, and came to include such other prominent names as Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla. Les Apaches, which obviously refers to the Native American tribe, also had the additional meaning of “hooligans” in French and was coined by Ricardo Viñes to describe the group as “artistic outcasts.” Viñes would premiere several of Ravel’s piano works, including his Miroirs, which the composer dedicated each of its five movements to a member of Les Apaches.

Miroirs was composed during 1904-05 and given its premiere in 1906. Meaning “Reflections,” the work demonstrates the development of Ravel’s technique as a composer of piano music, which had first leapt into maturity in his 1901 piece, Jeux d’eau. Ravel’s treatment of the vast possibilities of the piano was simultaneously inspired by the florid style of Franz Liszt and the most profound advancement in piano technique since that great virtuoso’s time. This style came to be a cornerstone of French Impressionism and even influenced Ravel’s older contemporary, Claude Debussy.

“Alborada del Gracioso” (“The Jester’s Aubade”) is the fourth piece of Miroirs, which Ravel dedicated to the music critic Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi. An “aubade,” as opposed to a serenade, was a morning love song, the parting of lovers at daybreak. This movement, in Ravel’s Spanish vein, is one of the most technically challenging of the suite, owing to its fast repeated notes and sweeping glissandi in thirds and fourths. It is also one of two (“Une barque sur l’océan” being the other) movements that Ravel later orchestrated. The outer sections are lively and energetic with an incessant dance-like motion paired with its Spanish-influenced melodies. The central episode, on the other hand, contrasts several different elements. A slow, lyrical melody, unaccompanied, begins the episode and is followed by a passage of long-sustained harmonies, while both are punctuated by brief occurrences of the dance-like rhythms heard earlier. From this mostly lethargic and static soundscape erupts a boisterous fortissimo melody, which nonetheless quickly fades away. An altered reprise of the opening completes the movement’s ternary form and the listener is carried on to its spirited and flamboyant conclusion.      Joseph DuBose

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Alborada del Gracioso, from Miroirs        Maurice Ravel

Miroirs is Maurice Ravel's first great large scale suite for piano, written in 1905 and premiered in Paris by Ricardo Viñes in 1906.  Although Ravel hated the term "Impressionist"-as did Debussy-Miroirs is a model of the impressionist style, including ethereal harmonies and evocative titles which leave much to the imagination.  The composer said that the suite "forms a collection of pieces for the piano which mark a considerable change in my harmonic evolution."  Indeed, audiences had trouble following some of the movements at first, but it has since become a staple of the piano repertoire. 

I have chosen three movements to perform today:  Noctuelles (Night Moths) contains skittering figurations throughout which almost give the impression of a continuous cadenza.  These are contrasted in the middle section by lyrical repose, but never quite leave the texture completely.  Une barque sur l'océan (A Boat on the Ocean) is in my opinion the most breathtaking of the cycle.  It is a masterful wash of arpeggios and harmonic progressions building to a graduated climax, and painting a clear picture of a boat at sea.  Alborada del gracioso (Morning Song of the Jester) was certainly written with Ricardo Viñes' well-known virtuosity in mind, as Ravel employs fiendishly difficult techniques (such as repeated notes and double-note glissandi) in the outer sections.  These are contrasted by a middle section that employs the chanting techniques of the Spanish cante-hondo. 

Spencer Myer

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.