Maurice Ravel's Miraculous Orchestration

Ravel volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Western Front during World War I. Between 1914 and 1917 he composed Le Tombeau de Couperin, a suite for piano, with a sequence of movements, modelled on Baroque dances but composed in Ravel’s own unique idiom. He subsequently orchestrated four of the movements. Each movement of the suite was dedicated to a friend who had died fighting in the war. Despite his own personal experiences of the horrors of Verdun, and his increasing ill health (and what would now be classified as PTSD), Ravel refused to allow a sombre mood into his music, commenting, “the dead are sad enough in their eternal silence.” The music in this extract comes from the Prelude, first in its original version for piano, and then in Ravel’s own orchestration of 1919.

MUSICAL EXCERPTS USED IN THIS VIDEO
Prelude from Le Tombeau de Couperin (version for piano solo)
Nathalia Milstein, piano

Prelude from Le Tombeau de Couperin (orchestral version)
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Zoltán Kocsis, conductor

links -

Original full piano recording - https://bit.ly/3QfDVft

Original full orchestral recording - https://bit.ly/3Iwo7TI

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Edited by Ian Coulter ( https://www.iancoultermusic.com )
Produced and directed by Ian Coulter & Matthew King