LDV109

24 RAVEL ∙ THE SOLO PIANO WORKS Ravel orchestrated his Valses nobles et sentimentales , as he did many of his keyboard works. Do the colours of his piano music call for those of the orchestra? Absolutely, even in the works he didn’t orchestrate. Debussy, like Chopin before him, explored all the harmonic resources and colours of the piano as it existed in his day. Ravel, as the heir to the spirit of Liszt, gives the impression of wanting to go beyond the instrument. The filiation between the two composers is obvious in Jeux d’eau , Gaspard de la nuit and some of the pieces in Miroirs . Just listen to Liszt’s Feux follets alongside Ondine (as Ravel often suggested): in the closing bars the keys are different but the harmony of the final runs is perfectly identical! As for Scarbo , the dialectic of its two contrasting themes, its diabolical virtuosity, the violence and acidity of its repeated notes which interrupt the lyricism and seize it by the throat – don’t these remind us of the Mephisto Waltz no.1? Situated between Ondine and Scarbo , Le Gibet is a mysterious piece, an ‘in-between’ universe, a mineral landscape from which life has disappeared, where we are the onlookers. With its inexorable knell, that inexpressive, hypnotic B flat, it evokes death, but in a way far removed from the manner of the poem that inspired it: are we really horrified? Just as the ‘boat on the ocean’ seems to me empty, alone, the ‘gibbet’ is there before our eyes, but is the hanged man still at the end of his rope?