Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 05/28/2011, uploaded on 05/28/2011

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

In 1905, Maurice Ravel, near the exact midpoint of his life, wrote Miroirs. In that music, he looked back to youthful and lasting piano successes, but looked ahead to the brilliant Impressionist works that make his music riveting. Miroirs preceded any of Debussy's epochal piano works, and claim attention for Ravel as pioneer, innovator and even magician. He wrote at the time that these pieces "…mark a rather considerable change in my harmonic evolution." He could also have mentioned the new complexity of his rhythms and the extraordinary subtlety of the virtuosic music he had written.

Looking forward and backward is an image apt for Ravel. Miroirs is a classical piece, a gloss on the austerity of the 18th century, yet its expanded tonality colors the music with exotic shades, and the virtuosity it demands sharply limits the number of pianists able to explore it. In other works, he found inspiration in older music, yet he was early identified as a flaming modernist.

The five sections of Miroirs describe imagined scenes.  In the fourth, "Alborada del Gracioso," the dramatic climax of the set, Ravel captures the Spanish mythos, its rhythms and guitar sounds, and shows off rapidly repeated notes.  This section was dedicated to Michel Dimitri Calvocoressi, a music writer.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.