Ravel orchestrated his piano pieces Alborada del gracioso and Pavane pour une infante défunte to great effect; the former gains in suggestive colour, and the latter evokes nostalgic pathos. Another orchestrated work is the Menuet antique, which is redolent of old French dance forms Rapsodie espagnole, Ravel’s first major orchestral work, shimmers with expectancy and bursts into Spanish dance rhythms, themes he pursued in Pièce en forme de habanera. His earliest orchestral work, the ‘fairy overture’ Shéhérazade, is all that remains of a planned opera based on The Thousand and One Nights. The famous Boléro, an ‘orchestrated crescendo’ of undimmed power, has proved one of the most popular works in all classical music.

Volume One was warmly received by critics and pianophiles alike. Jacob Lateiner's reputation was massive in his lifetime but he did not make very many studio recordings. This release and it's previous volume correct that anomaly with great distinction. Noted as a Beethoven interpreter, this album combines the Greatest of his Beethoven interpretations with the most famous of works by Schumann, Ravel and Liszt.

Ravel' masterpiece, Daphnis et Chloe, was composed for the Ballets Russes and premiered in 1912. Ravel described his sumptuous score, for large orchestra, wind machine and wordless chorus, as "a choreographic symphony in three parts�.

Conductor Robert Trevino’s new album release on Ondine – after a successful debut with a complete Beethoven symphony cycle – features six orchestral pieces by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), one of the most famous Basque composers, played by the Basque National Orchestra. Born in a small town in France very close to the Spanish border, Ravel spent most of his life in Paris. However, he was extremely proud of his Basque background having absorbed himself to the culture already as a child, and many elements of Basque music can be found in his compositions. In this historic release, we can finally hear Ravel’s orchestral music being interpreted by Basque musicians in the form of the Basque National Orchestra. These performances on some of the most fantastic orchestral scores of the 20th Century also shed light to the Basque influences in Ravel’s music.

REVIEW:

This is one terrific album! Put aside your expectations of how Ravel’s music should sound based on prior experience of it as played by world-class orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic (Boulez), Concertgebouw (Haitink), Boston Symphony (Ozawa), London Symphony (Abbado), or Montreal Symphony (Dutoit). Only the French National under Martinon offers a unique and distinctive (i.e. “French”) sound, but even that ensemble boasts a polished refinement that is far and away different from the wonderfully rustic timbres of the Basque National Orchestra.

Under the direction of conductor Robert Trevino, this band from San Sebastián in the Basque Country (which straddles the border between France and Spain) conjures an exotic affect most apparent in Ravel’s Spanish-influenced works, particularly in Rapsodie espagnole: the dream-state of the opening Prélude à la nuit rightly seduces here, while the closing Feria delightfully invokes a castanet-playing flamenco dancer. In Trevino’s hands Alborada del gracioso evokes the orchestra-sized guitar Ravel envisioned.

But it’s not only the overtly Spanish-styled works that succeed in this collection; Trevino and his forces also ideally capture the plangent tones of Pavane pour une infante défunte, as well as the luxurious delirium of La valse. Even Boléro holds the attention here, as the Basque musicians play with a freshness that belies the work’s warhorse status. Trevino’s powerful reading of Ravel’s early and rarely programmed Une barque sur l’océan is a welcome bonus.

Ondine’s vivid, wide-ranging recording draws you directly into the performances, making this release a must-have for seasoned Ravelians and newcomers alike.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Victor Carr Jr.)

MIROIRS, LA VALSE, AND OTHER W

After her triumphant Schumann recording, rising violin star Lena Neudauer returns to tackle the incredibly demanding violin works of Maurice Ravel. Accompanied by Paul Rivinius on piano and alongside guest cellist Julian Steckel, Neudauer presents rare and popular works alike, creating a true image of a master.

Throughout her career, internationally heralded harpist Yolanda Kondonassis has found herself fascinated by the luscious creations of French composer Maurice Ravel. Ravel: Intimate Masterpieces is a celebration of Kondonassis' longtime love of Ravel's music, and a celebration of the great roster of Oberlin Conservatory of Music talent that came together with her to record the album on campus in January 2013. 'This disc is especially meaningful because I was able to make it with such wonderful players and to celebrate the wealth of artistry and musical opportunity that lives at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music,' says Kondonassis.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Now here’s a novelty that fans of Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov will want to hear. In 1910, the story of Antar reached the stage in Paris as a play, with incidental music by Ravel arranged out of Rimsky’s eponymous symphony/tone poem (with a bit of Mlada thrown in for good measure). There is very little original music by Ravel–just a couple of minutes in all–but the arrangements involve some telling reorchestration and the creation of numerous short interludes. The cinematic conclusion (sound clip) sums things up nicely. All told, you get almost the complete original work: the first three movements, plus a good bit of the finale, albeit in a different order.

Unfortunately, for this premiere recording a long, pretentious, self-consciously “poetic” narration has been added, with words by Amin Maalouf. His main musical distinction lies in the fact that he has furnished several opera librettos for Kaija Saariaho, as if that’s a recommendation. My annoyance grew with every word. I mean, the only reason anyone wants to hear this piece is to find out what Ravel did with Rimsky’s original. Why put narrator André Dussolier in what sounds like an empty aircraft hangar and superimpose his histrionic reading of the text on top of the music? You’ll get through it, but it was a bad decision.

That said, Slatkin’s conducting is excellent, as it almost always is when he’s interpreting Russian music, and the sonics are very good when the narrator isn’t narrating. The coupling is a fine performance of Shéhérazade. Isabelle Druet’s voice is, arguably, a bit too small for the work, but she only sounds strained at the climax of Asie. Otherwise, she sings with intelligence, excellent diction, and characterful attention to the text. A sometimes frustrating release, then, but a collector’s item all the same.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

RAVEL: BOLERO, LA VALSE, ETC

Playing pieces from “Miroirs” and “Gaspard de la nuit,” empathetic pianist Ragna Schirmer reveals the essence of Ravel’s artistic compositions with delicate brilliance. These musical works are animated by an incomparable union of mechanical precision and aching fantasy. In such moments it becomes clear that these mournfully beautiful sound creations are the essence of the artistic soul whose fibers Maurice Ravel wove into his compositions so assuredly. Ragna Schirmer’s exquisite interpretations bear witness to Ravel’s passionate sensibilities and that which could not be said, something he himself concealed from those around him during his lifetime. This virtuoso recording is also a bold interpretation that demands the attention of the listener. With her distinctive interpretations, Ragna Schirmer enjoys an exceptional reputation far beyond the borders of Germany. She has won the highly regarded International Bach Competition in Leipzig twice- a unique achievement in the history of the prize. Numerous awards from national and international competitions, ecstatic reviews and the receipt of two of Germany’s top classical music awards, the ECHO Klassik, reflect her remarkable career. Her teachers include Bernard Ringeisen in Paris, himself a student of Marguerite Long, friend and student of Maurice Ravel.

In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF (Radiodiffusion Television Francaise) in Paris and made her first recordings; these were works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. In the following decades she made nearly 100 LPs and CDs, released on ten record labels (Pretoria, Vega, Decca, Atlantic/Finnadar, Pantheon, EMI, Naxos, Marco Polo, Alpha, BMP) and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. These included the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as the Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) is now bringing together her past and present recording; as the copyrights are obtained, old recordings no longer available commercially are being released together with her new recordings. The transcriptions by Liszt of Beethoven's Symphonies, originally recorded for EMI, and the newly recorded 32 Sonatas and all the Piano Concertos of Beethoven were released by IBA and also made available in a box set. All the Piano Concertos of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Grieg and the nine LPs recorded for Atlantic/Finnadar in New York which include works by Boulez, Webern, Berg, Ravel and Stravinsky were also released. Among the recent new releases are Liszt's Etudes and the piano transcription of Berlioz's Harold en Italie, Schumann's Carnaval, Fantasie and other works, all five Piano Concertos of Hindemith and, in the Archive Edition, the early LPs made in France for Pretoria (Schumann, Brahms), Vega (Bartok, Prokofiev, Brahms, Beethoven) and Decca (Rachmaninov). IBA is distributed worldwide by Naxos.

Classical Music

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

Also available on standard CD

RAVEL Alborada del gracioso. Pavane pour une infante défunte. Rapsodie espagnole. Pièce en forme de habanera. Shéhérazade: Ouverture de féerie. Menuet antique. Boléro • Leonard Slatkin, cond; Lyon Natl O • NAXOS 8.572887 (67:37); NAXOS NBD0030 (Blu-ray audio: 67:38)


In the last issue, I found myself enormously impressed by Slatkin’s Berlioz Symphonie fantastique , so when I received his latest CD labeled Ravel Orchestral Works 1, I was expecting him to do as right by one French composer as he did by another. That must sound pretty silly, I know, but in the event, Slatkin doesn’t disappoint. He now presides over a French orchestra, but to listen to these performances, you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t the Philharmonic of London, Berlin, or New York. That’s very high praise for both the Lyon National Orchestra and for what Slatkin has achieved with the ensemble in so short a time. But it doesn’t necessarily make his Ravel special or more desirable than that by other conductors and orchestras.


Unlike Debussy, whose orchestral output is fairly limited, Ravel actually wrote a good deal of original music for orchestra, but no small volume of it is bound up in his early vocal and choral works, and is therefore not usually included in complete collections of scores that are exclusively for orchestra. But then any collection of Ravel’s purely orchestral works, which were originally conceived for orchestra, are mainly ballet and choreographed scores that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and only one of them is on this disc— Boléro . But what of the other famous pieces included here?


Alborada del gracioso is the fourth movement from Miroirs , originally a suite for solo piano. It and two other numbers from the five-movement suite were subsequently orchestrated by Ravel himself. Pavane pour une infante défunte is a student piece Ravel wrote for solo piano in 1899 while under the tutelage of Fauré at the Paris Conservatory. Ravel orchestrated the Pavane himself, but not until 1910. Rapsodie espagnole was originally composed as a piece for piano duet in 1907, then orchestrated a year later. Ravel probably projected this to be an orchestral work from the start, but wanted to take his time working out the orchestration. Pièce en forme de habanera is, and was, as far as Ravel was concerned, a wordless vocalise for voice and piano. It exists in a number of instrumental arrangements—the present one is adapted for violin—none of which is by Ravel. Shéhérazade: Ouverture de féerie , like the Rapsodie espagnole , was originally sketched for piano, but intended for orchestra. It was destined to become the overture to an opera by the same name which Ravel worked on in 1898 but never completed. Menuet antique is another piece composed for solo piano, this one in 1895. Ravel did get around to orchestrating it himself, but not until 1929. And finally, Boléro . This is the one piece on Volume 1 of Slatkin’s Ravel survey, which, as far as we know, went straight to its orchestral form without passing through a piano version. Interestingly though, it made a backward migration to piano when Ravel subsequently produced two keyboard arrangements, one for two pianos and one for piano four-hands. The piece was commissioned by the famous dancer, Ida Rubinstein—she who played the saint in Debussy’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian and scandalized the Parisian archdiocese. It was bad enough to cast a woman in the role of a male saint, but a Jewish woman, and a lesbian to boot, went too far.


It seems that Ravel’s Boléro caused a flap of its own, but it wasn’t an ecclesiastical one. The work was wildly successful from its very first performance at the Paris Opéra in 1928. But not long after, Ravel and Toscanini got into a dispute over the conductor’s tempo when he led the New York Philharmonic in the piece in Paris during the orchestra’s European tour. The two men exchanged heated words backstage, Ravel criticizing Toscanini for taking the piece too fast and not following his indicated tempo. Toscanini is alleged to have replied, “When I play it at your tempo, it’s not effective.” To which Ravel shot back, “Then don’t play it.” I’m afraid I’m with Toscanini on this one. For me, Boléro can’t be played too fast, the faster the better. Much as I take pleasure in most of Ravel’s music and can appreciate Boléro ’s mechanics, it’s one of those few works, like Orff’s Carmina Burana , that induces in me a feeling of revulsion. So, by all means, get it over with as quickly as possible.


Those who prefer their Boléro drawn out will no doubt like Slatkin’s reading of it, but Ravel might have the opposite complaint he voiced to Toscanini. The score is marked 72 to the quarter note. I tested the current performance against my metronome and found that Slatkin begins at 67 and gradually speeds up, finally reaching 72 about 30 seconds from the end. But this is not what Ravel wanted; he was clear that he wanted a steady beat maintained throughout.


As indicated at the outset, this is a finely performed program of Ravel favorites. The Lyon orchestra has the full measure of this music in its DNA, producing the veritable kaleidoscope of colors, both bright and pastel, that Ravel calls for. And unless you’re a Boléro fanatic, I wouldn’t be too hard on Slatkin for his slight deviation from the composer’s explicit instructions. A conductor’s job, after all, is to offer an interpretation. The recording, too, is quite good, though not as dynamic as the Berlioz Fantastique I reviewed from this same source. I’m inclined to recommend this release, but as a nicety rather than a necessity, to those in the market for a new sampler of Ravel favorites.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges captures an imaginative child’s world in which the creatures and objects around him come to life. Wittily portrayed in Colette’s inventive libretto and by Ravel’s meticulous orchestration, furniture, crockery and animals alike are at first provoked by the child’s appalling behavior, finally helping him after he bandages the squirrel’s paw he had previously pricked with his pen. The unforgettably enchanting Mother Goose translates well-known fairytales into music, including the gently melodic Sleeping Beauty’s Pavane, her conversation with the gruffest of beasts, and a final blessing in The Fairy Garden. Leonard Slatkin, music director of the Orchestre National de Lyon and the Detroit Symphony, has made more than 100 recordings that in total have earned him seven Grammy® awards and 64 Grammy® nominations.

-----

Review:

The all-French cast articulate the text splendidly, with tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt doing his usual superb number as L'Arithmétique. Mezzo Hélène Hebrard as the Child sounds suitably young and fresh, soprano Annick Massis as the Fire negotiates her high coloratura with accuracy and élan.

– BBC Music Magazine

This third installment in a series documenting the works of Maurice Ravel includes his longest work, Daphnis et Chloe, as well as Valses nobles et sentimentales. The works are performed here by the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR). Founded in 1945, the ensemble is one of the most significant musical ambassadors for Germany. The SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart are also counted among the top ensembles in Germany. They frequently perform concerts on their home stages, and are often invited abroad.

Anna Vinnitskaya celebrates dance, or rather the dances of composers from very different periods and styles: Ravel, Shostakovich and Widmann. ‘In all these works, you can feel in some way transported to the world of childhood. Because I believe the childhoods of each of these three composers are reflected there’, says the pianist. In his Valses nobles et sentimentales, Ravel paid tribute to Schubert. A few years later, he transcribed for solo piano his ballet score La Valse, in which ‘billowing clouds part from time to time, allowing us to glimpse waltzing couples’. Shostakovich’s Dances of the Dolls make me think of the Soviet cartoons of my childhood’, says Anna Vinnitskaya. ‘They also remind me of Mozart: they are as bright as diamonds, sincere and beautiful.’ The Zirkustänze (Circus Dances) composed by Jörg Widmann in 2012, a brilliant kaleidoscope of emotions and parodies, round off the programme.

Stéphane Denève, triple winner of the Diapason d’Or of the Year, produced many outstanding recordings as chief conductor of the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart from 2011 until 2016 when the orchestra merged with its sister orchestra from Baden-Baden and Freiburg to form the SWR Symphony Orchestra. They are now reissued as a five album boxed set including the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel's longest work, written for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the operas L'Heure espagnole and L'Enfant et les sortileges. Although the two operas cannot be strictly considered orchestral works, they are essential to understanding the œuvre of a composer who had a great predilection for fantasy worlds and the exotic. As a student Ravel composed the Ouverture de Shéhérazade and, several years leter, three poems for voice and orchestra on the same topic – both works form part of this set. Throughout his entire career, from Une barque sur l'ocean to Ma mère L'Oye Ravel created magical soundscapes in a highly original manner and with great stylistic freedom. A big inspiration for him was American operetta but also jazz and fairy tales. The formal structure of his works has the clarity of crystal and the elegance of mathematics. The SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart and the cast of young singers selected by Denève give thrilling interpretations.

REVIEWS:

Denève was the final Chief Conductor of this orchestra, from 2011-2016, after which they merged with the South West German Radio Orchestra for budgetary reasons. Their timbre is mellow and warm, akin to that of the Boston Symphony, but their ensemble playing and attack are tight.

The set is a highly worthwhile investment if you want a single collection of Ravel’s orchestral music. The sound is warm, clear, and spacious. Highly recommended.

-- Limelight (Australia)

Denève is very consistent in his meticulously prepared if slightly detached style. The playing and engineering is consistently very good indeed. The price of this box set is attractive. The song cycle and the two operas engaged me the most.

-- MusicWeb International

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s legendary association with the Minnesota Orchestra yielded many classic recordings – and this selection of orchestral works by Ravel is one of them. Recorded in 1974 these Vox recordings have been newly remastered from the original tapes.

REVIEW:

A Polish conductor and an American orchestra play Ravel as if they were French. The Vox recordings from 1974 have been remastered from the original tapes and sound absolutely magnificent in their new freshness as far as the sound image and transparency are concerned.

Skrowaczewski begins with an elegant and finely differentiated, incredibly colorful version of the Valses Nobles et sentimentales. He gives the ballet Ma mère l’oye a wonderfully magical, sensual and suggestive character. Drama, crackling tension, subtle excitement and lyricism mingle in a dreamlike interpretation.

The two Daphnis et Chloé suites are no less outstanding and evocative. Here, too, the Minnesota Orchestra plays at the highest level of interpretation and technique, committed and, in the finale, ecstatic, following the highly inspired conductor. The St. Olaf Choir also deserves praise.

-- Pizzicato

The Telegraph Quartet makes their Azica Records debut, In this first installment we have two works that, as far as can be determined, have never been recorded together. They are equally unlikely to have appeared together on the same mainstream live concert program. Ravel’s only string quartet is often paired with Debussy’s only string quartet particularly to showcase their shared lineage of French Impressionism, and that Ravel’s design was strongly influenced by Debussy’s. Schoenberg’s first numbered quartet is most often programmed within the cycle of his own radically evolving quartets, or with the work of the larger “Second Viennese School”, perhaps even the quartets of his only teacher Anton Zemlinsky. Here, in a striking setting, two of the greatest 20th century composers share the program with two distinctively different masterworks that have a nearly identical chronology. Born one year apart (Schoenberg in 1874, Ravel in 1875), these contemporaries composed, premiered and published their quartets between 1902 and 1907 (Ravel first, then Schoenberg). 1904 saw the premiere of Ravel’s quartet just as Schoenberg began to compose his. This synchronicity in the first decade of the 20th century makes this pairing an extraordinary snapshot of the avant- garde: A time capsule.

The juxtaposition is a marvelous invitation for comparison and contrast. It presents two significantly divergent “schools” that nonetheless share some interesting traits. The history, temperament, life story and lasting influence of each composer portray them as wildly different, like two different musical species. But together, their quartets paint a vivid portrait of a shared moment within the long history of the string quartet genre

Ravel composed his Piano Trio M67 just before enlisting voluntarily in the First World War. Inspired by the Basque country and its zortziko dance, the Trio ends with a sombre, almost anguished fourth movement. A mood inspired by the impending war? In his Piano Trio No.2, op.67, Shostakovich too is affected by the horrors of war and the death of a close friend. For the first time in the Russian composer’s output, we hear a Jewish theme, a danse macabre echoing the terrible events of the time. Another point in common between the two works is that both include a passacaglia. For the Busch Trio, it was self-evident that these two heart-rending works should be brought together on the same album.

REVIEW:

The Busch Trio has the depth of musicianship to encompass the very different emotions of these great 20th-century chamber works. In the Ravel, the music’s dreamlike quality comes across particularly vividly, without any indulgence. At the same time, there’s no lack of urgency in the more agitated full-blooded sections that have a tremendous visceral energy.

After the Mediterranenan glow of the Ravel, the Shostakovich come as something of a shock. The Finale is the most challenging movement both for the players and the listeners. The Trio focus on holding back for as long as possible, so that when the climax is eventually reached – with the forceful restatement of the Trio’s opening material – the impact is absolutely overwhelming.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Robert Trevino’s first album together the Basque National Orchestra featuring orchestral works by the great French-Basque composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) received an excellent response. The program in this second volume is perhaps more ‘French’ in nature, but the Basque orchestra is giving dazzling performances of these works by their own national composer. While the first album was focused on some of Ravel’s most popular orchestral works, this album includes some rarities, including Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) in its complete ballet version, as well as one world première recording: Pierre Boulez’s orchestration of Ravel’s World War I-era piano work, Frontispice.

REVIEW:

Can we ever have enough Ravel? Certainly not when the performances are this good. For the second disc in his traversal of Ravel’s orchestral works, Robert Trevino and the Basque National Orchestra offer an enticing mix of familiar and unfamiliar items. You get an aptly crystalline performance of the elusive Valses nobles et sentimentales, fortified by an appealing lightness of rhythm, followed by the zillionth version of the unkillable Menuet antique. Frontispice, a tiny “avant-garde” work originally written for piano five-hands, and here orchestrated by Pierre Boulez, comes off sounding very much like, well, Pierre Boulez. So now we know where he got much of his own inspiration.

The Shéhérazade Overture, Ravel’s first big orchestral work, seldom gets played and the reasons aren’t surprising. It’s long (14 minutes here), kind of formless, and lacking in memorable ideas, but of course the orchestration is marvelous and it’s good to have such a vivid new recording and performance. Finally, there’s the complete Mother Goose ballet, one of Ravel’s major masterpieces. This version is gorgeous, nicely flowing in the main numbers, and full of atmosphere in the evocative interludes between them. Trevino wisely refuses to sentimentalize the concluding “Fairy Garden,” which sounds so much more touching for just that reason. In short, this is a lovely, interesting program that offers far more than the “same old Ravel.” It’s a keeper.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

This LP is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Ersin Onay, the Dean of the Music Faculty of Bilkent University who organised the Ravel Concertos performances of Idil Biret with maestro Jean Fournet in the 1990s

Although Maurice Ravel, in his string quartet, explicitly refers to the quartet written ten years earlier by his colleague Claude Debussy, he opts to follows his own new path and arrives at a distinctively Ravelian tone: colorful, refined, and saturated with that flair of the artificial that also characterized his beloved porcelain and glass artworks, ornamental shrubs, and bonsai trees. At the same time, the quartet is meticulously constructed and so rich in ingenious details that it offers room for discovery even after repeated listening. Over twenty years Ravel's senior, Fernand de La Tombelle wrote in a Romantic style against which the better-known composer's work stands in sharp relief.

Marc Soustrot conducts Aarhus Symphony Orchestra in orchestral works by Ravel. This is Soutrot's second release on Danacord after the acclaimed Bizet album.

Konstantinos Destounis has made a speciality of Ravel’s piano works, playing them in concert on many occasions, including a two-night survey of the whole solo-piano output at the Conservatoire in Athens last November. He made this recording around the same time and captures the sense of music on the wing, still wet on the page from the pen of its fastidious creator. Born in Athens in 1991, Destounis studied in Thessaloniki and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg before taking his Master’s at the Royal College of Music in London. Springboard to his performing career has been winning many international piano competitions, most notably the Grand Prix Maria Callas in Athens, the Southern Highlands in Canberra and the Bremen European Piano Competition. On this album, his first major recording, he reveals himself to be a compelling interpreter of music which still sets a benchmark among pianists for technical finesse and musicianship. For Ravel, as for Beethoven and Stravinsky, the craft of composition was an essentially pianistic endeavour. While his image has become fixed in popular reception by masterpieces of orchestral colour such as Boléro, La valse, and Daphnis et Chloé, the composer regarded the processes of composition and orchestration as separate. He remarked to his student Vaughan Williams that ‘without a piano one cannot invent new harmonies’. Ravel paid tribute to his teacher Gabriel Fauré as ‘the origin of whatever pianistic innovation my works may be thought to contain’. All the same, the pianistic influence of Saint-Saëns makes its presence felt too, and Chabrier in the early pieces. Perhaps Ravel becomes more himself in each successive piece, from the Sérénade grotesque of 1892–93 through to Le tombeau de Couperin of 1914–17, but the process is one of refinement rather than radical transformation, taking in the darkly disturbing imagery of Gaspard de la nuit, which rapidly assumed totemic significance within the modern piano literature.