Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 12/29/2010, 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.

“Une barque sur l’ocean” (“A Boat on the Ocean”) is the third piece of Miroirs and was dedicated to the painter Paul Sordes. The lengthiest and quite possibly the most technically demanding piece in the suite, it is a piece of shimmering beauty and one of most evocative depictions of the ocean to ever be penned. Ravel later orchestrated the piece, along with the following one (“Alborada del gracioso”). A single motif heard from the outset, with an inherent fluidity as it changes naturally between duple and compound meter, is the musical germ from which the entire movement springs. Beneath this ostinato-like motif are rippling arpeggios that conjure in the mind the waves of the ocean as they gently rock the boat back and forth. From this beginning, the music expands—the underpinning of arpeggios, which are hardly broken throughout the entire course of the movement, expand to greater depths and dimensions, eventually encompassing both hands, and provide a rich background against which the principal motif undergoes various transformations. Following this motif as it traverses the background of arpeggios, the listener witnesses the course of the boat as it traverses the great expanse of the ocean. Quietly, however, the piece comes to a close as if we behold the ship slowly disappearing over the horizon.     Joseph DuBose

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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 third, Une barque sur l'océan ("A boat on the Ocean"), Ravel imagines a boat coursing through waves, quiet places and abrupt dramatic bits.  The bass murmurs about deep currents in the sea.  This piece is dedicated to

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.