Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 05/20/2008, uploaded on 01/25/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Ondine, from Gaspard de la Nuit     Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel composed Gaspard de la Nuit, which roughly translates as "Artful Dodger of the Night," in 1908, inspired by three poems of Aloysius Bertrand.  These nightmarish pieces masterfully depict the poetry's impressionist imagery in Ravel's most challenging cycle for the piano.

The first poem, Ondine, depicts a water nymph, luring a man into the water to become her husband. When her pleas are rejected, she "burst out laughing and vanished in showers that formed white trickles down my blue windowpanes." (Bertrand.) This beguiling image is portrayed with shimmering tremolando accompaniment passing from right hand to left, and by a gorgeous melody and waterfall-like climaxes.

"...Listen!--Listen!--it's me down here, Ondine, splashing all these droplets against your casement windowpanes so that they echo, here in the dim, regretful moonlight; and up there, high above us in her black silk dress, is the chateau's lady upon her balcony, gazing out at this beautiful starry night and at my lovely, sleeping lake. "

And when her softly murmured song was done, she begged me outright to slip her ring on my finger,
so as to become an Ondine's husband; and to return with her to her palace, there to become king of the lakes."

I. Faliks

And when I told her I loved a mortal woman, she pouted as if vexed; then shed a teardrop or two--but
finally burst out into laughter, to dissolve then like radiant raindrops, streaming down the length of my
blue-black windows....

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.