Reflections: The Piano Music of Maurice Ravel

by Paul Roberts

The piano music of Maurice Ravel is among the most thrilling, the most colorful, and, for pianists, the most challenging of the repertoire. This book is about how performers and listeners can discover it and relate to it – how it sounds and feels under the fingers and within the receptive imagination. But to write about those experiences, to explore the background, influences, and impulses behind Ravel's music, is to be engaged in a form of biography. Discovering the delicate melancholy of the Pavane and the Sonatine , the astounding virtuosity of Gaspard de la nuit , and the exotic tone painting of Miroirs (Reflections) leads to the question “Who was the extraordinary person who created this?”

Here are indispensable insights into the literary origins of Gaspard de la nuit , the derivation of the water imagery in Jeux d'eau and the sensuous delights of Miroirs . The chapter on Valses nobles et sentimentales illuminates Ravel's meticulously controlled sense of irony. Le tombeau de Couperin is related to the impact of the First World War on his psyche and to the refuge he sought in the civilizing values of the age of Watteau and Couperin. Intimate and perceptive, Reflections is inescapably about the life of Maurice Ravel – reflections, by way of the piano music, on an exceptionally private but immensely attractive man.

Genres: Music, France

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 2012

About the author

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Reviews

[Jordan Knapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of Ravel's piano music, but lacking depth in a lot of places. One feels that the author mainly wanted to spend time on the fourth movement of Miroirs. For most of these chapters, the writing seems to focus on specific readings of the work rather than offering multiple opinions or bits of information. (I read this while studying the Valses nobles et sentimentales and was a bit disappointed with the lack of information here.) Also, I can't see any good reason to exclude completely the piano version of La valse, which as of late is performed increasingly often and was written before the orchestration (the author erroneously states that it's actually an orchestral transcription for piano), nor the piano concertos, which any true performer of Ravel will want opinions about. Unfortunately, though containing a lot of good information, the lack of detail and depth and the lack of writing on the concertos means that there's still room for another book or three on the piano music of Ravel.