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In 1908, Maurice Ravel<\/a> <\/strong>entered a world of sleeping princesses, magical gardens and supernatural spirits. Inspired by the stories of Charles Perrault and Madame d\u2019Aulnoy, he began work on his piano duet Ma m\u00e8re l\u2019Oye<\/i>. His five exquisite fairytale vignettes, dedicated to his friends\u2019 children Mimi and Jean Godebski, take us from the hypnotic \u2018Pavane de la Belle dormant\u2019 to the vivid burst of \u2018Le jardin f\u00e9erique\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> There <\/span>could hardly be a more charming, innocent <\/span>piece. Yet that same year Ravel\u2019s thoughts also took a darker turn. Gaspard de la nuit<\/i> was the result, a fiendishly hard solo piano work haunted by strange sprites, devilish creatures and the spectre of death.<\/span><\/p>\n Gaspard<\/i>\u2019s three movements add up to one of the most difficult piano works ever written. Ravel had told fellow composer Maurice Delage that he wanted to create something more stretching than Balakirev\u2019s Islamey<\/i>, a notorious virtuoso piece that had become part of Parisian concert life in the 1880s, and which was performed by his friend the Catalan pianist Ricardo Vi\u00f1es. \u2018Perhaps I got a little carried away,\u2019 reflected Ravel. The score itself backs up the anecdote, even if Ravel did have a twinkle in his eye. To this day Gaspard<\/i> remains a peculiarly demanding test for any pianist.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Yet although the work requires keyboard wizardry that Liszt might have baulked at, in a successful performance all those notes should be serving the programmatic ideas. It\u2019s no mere showpiece. Indeed, Ravel\u2019s inspiration was specifically poetic. <\/span><\/p>\n In September 1896, the composer borrowed a book from Vi\u00f1es: Gaspard de la nuit<\/i>, subtitled Histoires vermoulues et poudreuses du Moyen age<\/i>. This collection of prose poems by the French author Aloysius Bertrand was written in the 1830s, then published posthumously a decade later. <\/span><\/p>\n With 51 poems in six books, as well as 13 \u2018pi\u00e8ces d\u00e9tach\u00e9es\u2019, there was plentiful source material \u2013 including much that appealed to Ravel and his love of the macabre. He chose three poems: \u2018Ondine\u2019, \u2018Le gibet\u2019 and \u2018Scarbo\u2019, each of which precede their respective movements in the first published version of his cycle, along with dedications to three different pianists: Harold Bauer, Jean Marnold and Rudolph Ganz.<\/span><\/p>\n Bertrand\u2019s visions inspired one of Ravel\u2019s greatest works, described by the pianist Alfred Cortot as \u2018one of the most extraordinary examples of instrumental ingenuity ever produced.\u2019 Yet, strangely enough, Ravel himself was no great pianist, unlike Beethoven (whose sonatas, to Ravel\u2019s dismay, were still all the rage in France), Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninov, who all had parallel performing careers. <\/span><\/p>\n While Ravel was not terrible \u2013 he studied at the Paris Conservatoire, after all, and would play his Ma m\u00e8re l\u2019Oye<\/i> in public \u2013 he wasn\u2019t up to the challenges of this new masterpiece. Mind you, he wasn\u2019t happy with how Vi\u00f1es played Gaspard<\/i> at its premiere in 1909; Ravel never let him give the first performance of one of his works again.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is Gaspard de la nuit <\/i>about?<\/span><\/h2>\n